


What We Risked Life And Limb To Find

by manler



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Accidental Drug Use, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I will add more tags as the plot moves foward, Kidnapping, Rated teen and up for language, Suicidal Thoughts, from Fiona's POV, from Rhys' POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5648158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manler/pseuds/manler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the opening of the Vault Rhys and Fiona thought their journey would be over, but the Vault wasn't what they thought it was. And the things that built the Vault were also not as dead as they thought they were.</p><p>On their way back to their friends, they will cross the path of new threats and face old enemies. Form new scars as the old ones heal (while trying not to get killed). Getting in the middle of a war with aliens was never their intention, but shit happens. You know, no rest for the wicked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Being raised in Pandora it was impossible not to get caught in the fever for the elusive Vaults and all of their legendary loot, treasures and glory. But the whole thing was so surrounded by exaggerations and straight up lies it didn't even sound real anymore. Especially after all this time, after she had made peace with the fact all of their efforts lead them nowhere… The new, fresh hope was the sweetest thing in the world.

In the Vault, with all the bright, Eridium colored walls, with those rocky stuff flying around, it felt like being in one of those stories about vaults and heroes Fiona grew up to.

“Would… you like to do the honors?” Rhys asked.

Fiona smiled, remembering the last time he asked that question. It felt like ages ago, when they first assembled what was soon going to be Gortys.

“It's the last one… It's only right that we both open it.” she shrugged “It's the best part.”

“Kinda hoping you'd say that.” Rhys was smiling like an idiot, but well, so was she. Guess that's what opening Vaults _actually_ does to people. Makes them unable to stop smiling. She could deal with that.

Fiona nodded and put her hand on the box ahead of her, a moment later so did Rhys.

Nothing happened for a long second, long enough to have Fiona wandering if they weren't doing it wrong, maybe there was a lever or a switch somewhere and they were standing here with their hands on the box like-

The box started getting warmer under her fingers. She exchanged a look with Rhys and then looked back at the box as the sound of engines echoed around them. The top of the alien object disassembled itself into smaller parts in a smooth motion, but she couldn't see what was inside of it yet, only a blinding white light.

She couldn't believe this was happening, and started to feel a like guilty for not waiting for Sasha. Too late for regrets now, the box seemed to have finished doing... whatever it was doing.

Fiona opened her mouth to say something about how this was taking a while when without warning the world turned white. Her arms went up to shield her eyes, and she felt less pleasant feelings than the peaceful bliss from before boiling up inside of her. She expected pain to come or maybe the loud cry of another monster. None of it happened. Instead, the ground was taken away from her feet, an undignified yelp escaping her lips as she fell to her knees.

She was surrounded by darkness. Slowly, she let her arms fall to her sides and touch the cold ground. Was this supposed to happen? Did they fall on a trap?

There was water dripping from somewhere behind them and the cold air smelled funny. Like it had been still for a long, long time. Just the kind of place that would hold the riches of a vault, right?

“Fiona?” she heard Rhys whispering right beside her.

“Right here.” Fiona reached in his general direction, found his arm and gave it a quick squeeze. Just a minute ago she would have laughed at the way he startled, but now she didn't really blame him.

“Can you see anything?” she couldn't help but whisper too, something about not being able to see kinda making her not want to be seen either.

A dim blue light appeared by her side, nearly giving Fiona a heart attack. It came from the palm of Rhys robotic arm, bright enough to lighten only what was right in front of them.

“Not more than you can.” Rhys wavered the light around the room, revealing nothing but more darkness and a concrete floor. “I can't believe that thing just _teleported_ us. Where are we even?”

“Loot room?” Fiona tried to put some hope into her voice to no avail. She sighed. “Let's try to find a light switch or something.”

“Hmm, yeah, sure. Let's do that” Rhys sounded just as confident as she did.

They got up slowly, making a conscious effort to be quiet. And then they just stood there.

“Come on, you have the light, lead the way.” Fiona demanded in a hushed whisper.

“What way?” Rhys sounded annoyed. He pointed the light at her.

Fiona looked around herself but all the sides looked the same under the weak light coming from Rhys' arm.           

“I don't know. Let's go….” she pointed at a random direction “there.”

“If we die, it's on you.” his tone was light, which was kinda creepy considering their surroundings.

“Just shut up and walk” Fiona answered.

They moved with caution even though the ground was even and dry. It was hopeful thinking, that if they went too fast they might trip on a legendary weapon. Rhys stumbled on a wall before that.

“Aha! A wall! We're just a step away from-” the sound of metal scraping metal followed by the clatter of machinery shut him up before he could finish the sentence. It came from the wall, like it was remaking itself.

“What did you do?” Fiona couldn't help but sound a little panicked. Just a little.

She watched as a crack on the wall slowly grew wider, allowing a stream of light to pour into the room. She caught a glimpse of a dirty broken window on the other side.

“Opened a door, apparently?” Rhys giggled anxiously. Fiona could see his silhouette as he ran a hand though his hair. “Maybe a door that leads to our loot?”

As her eyes adjusted to the light Fiona turned around to the now well-lit room behind her. It was so tall she couldn't see the roof, but she could see most of the plain, grey walls and they guarded absolutely nothing.

Her heart fell to her stomach.

“It's empty.” she murmured in complete disbelief.

“Well, this room is, the loot must be somewhere else or- It's a vault, this thing must be huge...” Rhys was trying very hard to sound optimistic, failing epically too. He walked back into the room and proceeded to walk in circles with a hand running though his hair.

Fiona stared at the empty room in stunned silence at the _lack of things_ in front of her. There were a couple of corridors leading elsewhere that were still completely dark. Nothing. All of the shit they went through for nothing. Sasha almost died to get to this empty room. Felix, the bastard, he actually did die in the mess to open the Vault.

Her head was buzzing. This was the second time she had to deal with this. She couldn't believe the “All for nothing” felling was back. At least this time she didn't think any of her friends where dead.

She looked at Rhys.

“Someone must have gotten to the Vault before we did.” Fiona guessed. The magic, unreal feeling from before was completely gone. This right here? It felt acutely real. Familiar.

“Or we're not in the right place yet.” Rhys tilted his head up to the door behind Fiona, some new found hope making his eyes glow. Or it could be tears, who knows.

He walked in the direction of the door, about to make something stupid like getting killed by a rakk in the outside when Fiona stepped in his way. She was just as lost and disappointed as he was, but she had also learned not to act purely on despair.

“Hey, stop!” she crossed her arms firmly in front of her “We can't go wandering around this place by ourselves, we need our friends and… and a plan. We don't even know where we are!”

“Well I know where we are not, and it is with our well deserved loot”

“You know what? I was wrong, this can't be it.” Fiona assured him, trying to convince them both “We can't have opened an empty vault”

“So let's go-”

“But we can't risk _dying_ now! We need help.”

He stared at her, grimacing unhappily.

“Ok, ok, you're right.” he sighed, lighting up the arm again and going through menus, choosing things Fiona couldn't see “I'll call Vaughn”

“We can't be too far away anyway.” Fiona took a few steps back and leaned back on the ridiculously tall door. Behind it was a long corridor that ended on a door, it was one of those metal doors that were more often locked than not. They could deal with that later.

She also noticed the broken windows, floor covered in dirt, the place looked abandoned.

“Yeah, no, of course.” Rhys said absently as he flicked some more stuff.

Through the small dirty windows all she could see was a green blur, from the little she could see from the cracks she assumed it was trees. They must be further away then what she thought, maybe still inside the Vault or something.

“Hmm… Fiona?”

Fiona turned her eyes to him. He had stopped with the flickering and was now staring at her, worry covering his features.

“Oh, crap. What now?” she adjusted her hat and walked to his side to look at the blue hologram coming from his arm.

“There's no signal.” he looked down at her, looking positively freaked out.

“What do you mean there is no signal?” Fiona could feel her heart beat raising along with the volume of her voice “Why would there be no signal? I thought it reached the entire planet”

“It does.”

“Oh” Fiona let the information soak in. They were so epically fucked. “But it can… not work, right? I mean, with the whole teletransporting thing… it doesn't have to mean we're in… another… planet. Right?”

“I don't know... but it should work. I don't remember the last time I didn't have _any_ signal like this. Something could be malfunctioning, sure, but for now...” he shut the arm down “Guess we have no choice but to… hmmm, walk around? See what we find?”

“Rhys-”

“I would rather not to either. I mean, if this really isn't Pandora… not that I like Pandora, Pandora sucks. But...”

Fiona sighed and adjusted her hat.

“Yeah, we don't have a choice.”

“Exactly.” Rhys said “I'll keep checking, who knows how alien tech works with these things. Maybe if we get outside we'll be able to talk to our friends, or at least find out where we are.”

“I guess we could try that door out there, I think it's locked but-”

“Oh, you know no door is ever locked for me” he said smugly, waving his metal arm at her. Fiona rolled her eyes.

“Sounds like an awful plan.” Fiona walked into the hallway and looked back at Rhys “Let's go. And if we die, it's on you.”

            ---

Getting through the locked door on the end of the hallway wasn't hard. Rhys tried to hack the systems, couldn't do it. Then pushed the electronic lock with his metal arm, which worked.

As soon as the door opened the sound of an engine filled their ears, it was loud and rhythmic, coming from somewhere above them.

The room was round and very tall, which looked like a pattern around here. A vaguely scary pattern Fiona tried not to think too hard about. The walls and floor were identical to the corridor they left behind; grey with purple details, but there were no windows in this room. The only source of light was a big tube coming from the ceiling that bathed the place in a soft purple light. It ended just a few feet above the ground. It was the only hole in the room.

“No doors here.” Rhys pointed. He had to almost scream to be heard over the loud engines.

“Maybe this purple thing does something.” Fiona walked closer to the pipe with Rhys on her tail.

“I thought we were being careful” he said “That doesn't look like careful to me”

Fiona turned to him.

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Rhys looked at the pipe and then back at her.

“I guess there could be stairs inside that thing.” he admitted reluctantly.

The two of them stepped under the pipe. It was plane and sleek on the inside as it was on the outside, no stairs. On the end of it, way up high, there was the unmistakable blue of a sky.

“There must be a way to-” before Fiona could finish she felt the ground moving beneath her. The circle under the pipe had moved up slightly, just enough to make her and Rhys loose balance. And before they could recover it, they where violently pulled up by an invisible force.

The screaming was automatic. The pipe was here and gone in a second, Fiona caught a glimpse of the sky and then Rhys, who was looking down and screaming his lungs out. Then she felt herself being pulled down. _Oh no, not again._ A metal grid below her and she smelled copper. _This is gonna hurt._

The fall knocked the air out of her lungs. She rolled to her side, grunting and cursing this stupid place and the sadistic things that built it. As she tried to breath again, she watched her hat fall just out of her reach. Great.

She looked up and saw the gigantic hole in the roof that fooled them into thinking they were  going outside. The hell-pipe had actually thrown them in a metal grid. It was round, same size as the room below. The loud machinery sounded like it was right below them now.

Fiona tried to get up, but quickly discovered her wrist was glued to the ground. Frowning, she tried to lift it again, but the thing didn't budge. She knelt and tried to pull it away to no avail. That's when she realized it wasn't her wrist that was stuck, it was her pistol.

Rhys mumbled something unintelligible from somewhere behind Fiona.

“Are you okay?” the machinery sounds were so loud now she had to scream to be heard.

Fiona stopped trying to free her arm to look at him. Rhys was lying on his back looking at her pointless efforts from the other side of the circle.

“No! I'm stuck in a giant magnet!” he cried “I have an entire arm made of metal, Fiona, I try to avoid giant magnets!”

So that's what this was, a magnet. What was even the point of this place? Fiona shook her head and rolled up her sleeve the best she could to open the pistol's lock.

“Stop being such a crybaby” She absently noticed that the grid-circle-thing was open to a hall on one side, the one closest to her, whereas the other side was surrounded by walls.

She was about to take the pistol away from her arm when something besides her snapped. At first she thought she might have broken some part of the pistol, but no. The sound had definitely come from somewhere close to her on the ground. It was faint under the engine's sound, but it was enough to get her attention. She recognized that sound but she couldn't quite place it.

“What- what are you looking at?” Rhys tried to turn around but his arm had him tightly pinned to the ground.

Fiona finally found what had snapped. It was a small leaf, fallen on the ground not very far away from her. She tilted her head back in surprise as its edges caught on fire. And that strange smell of copper-

“It's a freaking magnet... shock… killing machine!” Fiona pulled at the lock and got up in a hurry, rubbing her wrist as she watched the dirt vibrating on the ground. It was like a wave getting closer and closer to her.

Fiona remembered this one time when she was a child and they set up a trap for some insufferable psychos that had been trying to raid Hollow Point. It was a giant shock pool, people kept complaining about the snapping sounds and the foul smell. That is, until the psychos actually fell on the trap and they shut it down.

“What did you say? Fiona!”

She walked away from the metal grid without taking her eyes out of the incoming electricity.

“Why are you-”

As soon as her feet touched the concrete surrounding the grid, Fiona noticed the metal getting bluer. She also saw her hat there. She hesitated for a second before putting a foot on the shock zone and getting it into the safety of the concrete. After all the shit they had been through, she wasn't going to loose it to a freaking shocky piece of floor.

Fiona put the hat back on her head.

Looking from a distance she could see the circle was divided in smaller sections, eight of them like a big fruit cut in the middle. She watched as the section she had been in turned to the grayish color of metal. The one right next to it slowly light up in blue. If it kept this direction and rhythm the shock wave would hit Rhys, who was three parts away, in less than a minute.

“Don't panic but-”

“I'm already panicked! Tell me what's happening!”

“The floor… it sends some shock wave thingies... I don't know how to…” Fiona watched as the shock wave entered the next section “it's about to fry you! How do I stop it?”

Fiona couldn't see his reaction, but when he spoke he sounded surprisingly collected.

“Look for a… a wire or a door that-” Rhys was looking at the sky, until he tilted his head to the side and Fiona could have pinpointed the moment he lost his shit “oh crap I can see it, Fiona do something!”

She looked around herself and saw no doors or wires. It seemed pointless to look for anything in the hall, it was clearly huge and full of other rooms. Fiona remembered how fast the electric pool killed the psychos and knew she couldn't waste any time if she wanted to get Rhys out of there alive.

But there was a narrow balcony above them, the kind of thing with “Employees only – Maintenance” written all over it. There was no visible access, but there had to be one somewhere. There was also no handrail, why built a tall thing like that and not put a handrail? But Fiona shook it out of her head, the design of this freaky place was irrelevant. That balcony was her best shot.

“I think I found something, I'll be back in a second”

She ran to the hall. Besides the shocky zone there was a massive wall full of cracks and water seepage marks. Some weird ass furniture too, but Fiona didn't pay it too much attention. She ran along the wall until she reached a corner. The space between the two walls was very narrow, only had space for a door or a staircase. Or another hell-pipe.

“Stairs, please be stairs…” she muttered under her breath. “Not a pipe, not a pipe...”

She turned the corner and, well, those were technically stairs, she guessed. Just the weirdest ones to have ever existed. They consisted of three huge, never encountering, floating black rocks. Big enough to reach Fiona's waist. They looked a lot like the ones floating around the Vault, but where the rocks on the vault looked like decoration, the ones in front of Fiona lead to a door. Even better, an open door.

_Looks like the right way to me._

She was very aware that by now Rhys had already endured a round of shock and that they didn't have much time. Fiona knew she had to get this right and do it fast.

The climb to the first step was awkward but easy. She used both her hands to prompt herself up and kneeled in the step.

The other rocks didn't look as promising. She would have no choice other than jump to the second step. It wasn't World's Hardest Jump but Fiona also wasn't World's Best Jumper, if she fell and hurt herself… She couldn't afford that.  And if she failed to make the jump after that? Broke an arm, maybe just sprained an ankle… Both Rhys and herself would most likely end up being skag food by the end of the day.

With that in mind, she took two steps back to get a momentum and jumped.

She landed by the edge of the step, but at the step all the same. She smiled at herself. _Maybe I can actually do it._ The smile was washed away from her face, though, when she put her eyes on the next rock. It was much higher than the second one.

Fiona unconsciously brought a hand to her hat. This was the last one, she couldn't fuck this up.

Two steps back and the moment her feet left the ground she knew she wasn't gonna make it. The edge of the rock hit her right in the stomach and she had to make a conscious effort of keeping her lunch inside. She could feel herself slipping as her nails scratched the rock frantically. _Yep, that's it, show's over._ Hey, maybe death wasn't that bad anyway. She could discover all these stuff about the after life and- She got a grip. Fiona was so relieved she almost let go of the rock altogether.

With her new-found support she pushed herself up in the rock just enough so that she wasn't falling to her death anymore.

Grimacing, she managed to haul one leg to the step and then the other. She allowed herself a second to lay down on the cold rock and just breath. _If I ever meet the asshole who built this place…_

Fiona got up and ran through the open door to a corridor that was just way too long and had way more doors than she needed. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she took the wrong way or took too long climbing that stupid staircase and Rhys was already dead. She was honestly surprised at how much she cared, really.

She tried the door by the end of the corridor first. Locked. And this time she didn't see anything punchable, it was just a regular lock and key door. Fiona went to the next one, also locked, and so was the next one. She felt like sitting down and crying by the time one of them finally opened.

At the other side of the door was a… control room? Looked like a control room. There were a bunch of machines with levers and buttons and working screens. Fiona noticed how tall everything was, not out of her reach tall, just weirdly tall. But she didn't have time to think about it.

There was an open door besides the machinery and it seemed to lead to the handrail-less balcony she had seen before. Fiona passed through it and realized she was right. There was the hell-pipe, and her pistol, and…

“Rhys!” she yelled “Are you okay?”

It took him a moment to find her, and he looked immensely relieved when he did. The blue part of the circle was about to get to him.

“Peachy!” he answered, eyes shut as if he was bracing himself for the blow.

“Just hang in there, I'm gonna turn it off!” she ran back into the control room, vaguely aware of Rhys' answer (something along the lines of “take your time”). She should just let him die, really.

Fiona looked at all the levers and buttons with despair in her eyes. She had been expecting a nice sign written “Shut This Entire Shit Hole Off” over a single red button. She had not prepared for this mess.

“Hmmm… ok… Let me just...” Fiona saw a metal cabinet on the wall. It looked as promising as anything else in there so she opened it. There were about ten levers inside it. “This is bullshit, come on”

“Fiona, I was joking!” she heard Rhys scream. “Do something! Now!”

“I'm- I'm doing things!” she screamed back, as she helpless looked at all the different levers. “You know what? Fuck it.” Fiona pulled a random lever.

She ran to the maintenance balcony. Rhys was being shocked, he had curled up in a ball, convulsing as the electric charge passed through his body. Nope. Wrong lever.

Fiona went back to the control room, looking at the machines and trying to find out which one was the right one. There was a big metal box with a four button menu in it, she ran to it and pressed all of them.

From the balcony she saw that the shock section had gone forward. Meaning it was still working, but at least it was away from Rhys. For now.

“Did… something happen?” she asked “Can you move?”

“No!”

Fiona went back inside. She hesitated before pulling another lever, and then the next one and the one after that. She pulled all of them.

By the balcony she could see Rhys stretching his legs again.

“What about now?” she asked.

“Nothing's changed! What are you doing up there, just turn it off!”

“I'm trying, it's not like there's a label on anything!”

Fiona ran back to the control room and just pressed all the buttons, pulled all the levers and hoped for the best. She couldn't make it any worse, right? She opened another cabinet, this one full of buttons and pressed all of them too. The computer looking machines were more tricky, she had no idea of how they worked so she just left them alone.

When she went back to the balcony Rhys was looking in the direction of the hall.

“Did it work? Can you move?” she yelled “What are you-”

He said something she couldn't understand, eyes still focused on something she couldn't see.

“Say it louder!”

Rhys widened his eyes at her, shaking his head sligthly. The shock circle was already getting close to Rhys again, she had no time for this.

“I'll take that as no.”

Fiona ran back inside and eyed the computers. She touched the screen of the closest one, nothing happened so she pressed them with more force. Nothing happened again so she punched it.

“Ow, ow, ow” she held her fist with the other hand. Bad idea.

She glanced at the screen, it had turned red. As good a sign as any other.

“What about now?” she yelled from the balcony.

Rhys didn't look away from the hall. Had the shock damaged his brain? Was that something that could happen?

“Does that mean it didn't work?” she insisted “Just shake your head yes or no”

“Fiona, shut- Oh, great, they saw me. They're coming straight at me now” he sounded hysterical. “Thanks a lot”

“What are you tal-” and then she saw it.

Three animals walked in the circle. At first she thought they were skags, but they were smaller and not as ugly. Their fur was black and they looked skinny. Hungry. They walked like blood thirsty predators, their eyes fixed on Rhys.

He started squirming, trying to get as far away from the animals as the metal arm would allow him. It wasn't much.

Fiona looked around herself for something she could throw at them, or anything that could help at all, she saw nothing but some dry leaves.

“Hey! Heeey, skags!” she jumped, waving both arms above her head “Over here!”

But the things didn't as much glance at her before focusing on Rhys again.

The section of the circle he was in was next in the shock line, but it was irrelevant now. If the electricity didn't kill him, the weird skags would.

“Maybe you should… maybe you should go now.” Rhys was hardly audible. “Or- or turn around.”

Fiona didn't move. There had to be a way.

But the weird skags weren't stopping or slowing down. They moved slowly but menacingly, predators about to pounce.

Rhys directed a quick look at her, checking if she was still there.

“Really, I- I don't want you to see this.” he started speaking hurriedly “Just find everyone and… there's nothing you can do-”

The skags jumped and Rhys covered his face with his flesh hand, it was the last thing Fiona saw before she turned away. She hadn't meant to, but she couldn't help it.

That's when she saw a single red button on the wall. It stared at her from the other edge of the balcony, mocking her. How would she tell everyone about this? Vaughn, Sasha? They would be heartbroken. How could she live with herself? When she was this close and failed him so bad. That was the only button left, it had to be it. But it was useless now.

She waited for the screams to begin. But they never did. The silence stretched on, all she could hear was the sound of machinery.

“Ah-ha-ha, I'm alive!” Rhys screamed in cheer surprise.

Fiona turned around, confused. He was intact, looking at his flesh hand as if he couldn't quite believe he still had it.

“What-” she looked at the two skags twitching on the floor inches away from Rhys' face, barely noticing the third one running away. They had jumped… on the electrified section? How-

Before she could voice her disbelief, though, or even process what had just happened, the electric field reached Rhys again. His head tilted back violently and every part of his body started spasming.

Fiona ran to the button as fast as she could. It had a glass cover. She fumbled with it for a painful few seconds and pushed the freaking button. The result was the satisfying sound of the machines turning off and finally, finally being silent.

“See, told you I'd turn it off” she said smugly, waiting for a sarcastic comeback. All she got was silence.

“Rhys?”

Still no answer.

She rushed back to her point at the balcony. He wasn't moving. At all. The shock was gone and she had no reason to believe the magnet was still holding him down, but she also couldn't be sure if he was alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Next chapter is coming soon, if everything goes as planned this fic is going to be a long ass monster
> 
> Don't forget to leave a comment if you liked the fic!


	2. Chapter 2

_Warning: error 36.024, please contact your doctor to ensure your..._

His entire body ached and he was laying on the floor, but he didn't know where. Everything was quiet, so he presumed Fiona had found a way to get him out of that shock grid of death. Last thing he remembered there were two mouths full of sharp teeth aiming at his head. Something went wrong for them, obviously.

_...could be caused by an abrupt hit that dama-_

Rhys made the alarm stop. He didn't know what it meant, but it had been setting off for months now. It made his arm beep and his eye was covered with this friendly Hyperion text… Very annoying. He wouldn't hate it so much if it hadn't almost got him killed in more than one occasion. And the worst part was he couldn't do anything about it if he wanted. There was no such a thing as a Hyperion MedCenter anymore.

Rhys moved his prosthetic fingers, just to be sure he could. Between the magnet and the shock hell he was actually surprised everything was still working.

He sat up, grunting and leaned his back against a wall. He was in a small square room with an open door and a big… glow-in-the-dark floating ball in the center? What the hell?

The echo eye still had no signal so he couldn't be that far away from that horrible magnet. Or he could just be really far away from Pandora and the magnet had nothing to do with it at all. He rubbed his eyes, maybe he was simply dead. Or hallucinating.

Rhys got up using the wall for support and walked out the door. He didn't recognize the place. It was big, full of things made out of black rock or glass. He didn't know what any of those things were, they were all too big and too weird to have been made by human beings. That realization made a chill go down his spine.

The room's walls were covered by huge windows that showed the night outside. He could see the top of trees and a sky full of stars.

“Look who's not dead and looking like shit!” Fiona's voice echoed through the room breaking the silence so abruptly Rhys felt himself looking for the stun baton as he flinched.

He turned around to see her head poking from the wall. She was sitting in the hole left by a broken window, her legs dangling above the forest below.

“You almost changed that now” Rhys said as he walked towards her. “The not dead part”

He sat with his legs crossed, a safe distance away from the broken window. Fiona had her pistol in her hands and was doing something to it.

“What happened?” he asked, when Fiona didn't say anything he elaborated “After those… those things came and… almost ate my face.”

“They jumped on the electricity, got stunned long enough for me to throw them in a room and drag you somewhere else” Fiona explained.

“Huh… If we find where they came from-”

Fiona nodded, eyes still on the pistol on her lap.

“We can get out of here, yeah, I thought so too.”

Rhys glanced at the forest below them. The trees were close enough that he couldn't see the ground, but he could hear things moving down there. It didn't look like a very welcoming place. There where mountains in the distance, they were covered in trees too. From this far, they looked like they were made of clay.

“Any signal now?” something on her pistol clicked and Fiona smiled at it.

“Nothing.” Rhys really hoped it wasn't because of whatever the hell the warning alarm was trying to tell him. It would be pretty embarrassing.

“Yeah, didn't think you would. Look at that.” Fiona pointed to the sky with her head, hands busy as she strapped the pistol on her wrist again. “That moon… it's not Elpis”

“What? There is no… Oh.” Rhys had almost missed it. The “moon” was nothing but a dot in the sky, not that bigger than the stars around it. It was nothing like the giant Elpis, hovering over Pandora night and day with a million times the size of that small little point in the sky.

“I can't find any constellation either, and just look at these trees” Fiona made a circle of a foot “There are just... so many of them” Fiona turned her head to look at Rhys “we're not in Pandora anymore. No wonder there's no signal.”

Rhys didn't say anything, he just looked at the strange stars above them. He hadn't expected his first interstellar trip to happen like this, not with the opening of a loot-less vault. Not without a tour guide or a fancy hotel to go back to. It was weird, and scary, knowing he was probably staring at a totally different set of stars.

This sky left no room for doubts; wherever they were, it wasn't Pandora.

“So I guess looking for signal is pointless.” Fiona said with a shrug.

“Maybe not. Ship Hangars usually send some signal so that people can find them if they get lost” he said tiredly.

“Or teletransported by aliens against their will”

“Right. So if we get close enough to one of them, we'll know” Rhys looked at his metal hand. They'd know. Hopefully. “Vaughn and Sasha must be looking for us, maybe… maybe they've already figured this whole thing out.”

Fiona turned to him, she looked like she was about to say something, but she didn't. Instead, she got up.

“I'm gonna get some sleep.” she said “Wake me up if more skags show up”

Rhys directed his best stuck up smile at her.

“I'll let you know”

She walked away, towards the room with the giant ball.

\---

Rhys dozed of at some point with his back to the wall. His flesh arm hung dangerously from the broken window hole and there was a generous amount of drool staining his jacket from where his open mouth touched his shoulder.

He brought his arm back inside with a yelp and used it to wipe his face. The sun had risen, and there was a quiet clicking sound coming from somewhere above him. It was a bird, not bigger than a fist, messing with something above the window. As Rhys watched, it flew away.

He got up and looked out the window, watching the bird fly towards the tree covered mountains far away. Rhys could learn to like this place. Where the birds were small and not deadly and the view wasn't a desert. Or frozen. Hopefully he wouldn't actually have to.

He wondered what Vaughn was doing at that moment. It's impossible he hadn't realized by now something went wrong. Maybe the Vault disappeared, maybe it stood there empty, either way he and the others must have started doing something. Be it look for them or their bodies. How long would it take before they realized he and Fiona were in another planet?

He walked towards the room with that big ball to wake Fiona up. They needed to find food and water and a way out of this place. And a bathroom, that would be nice too.

The door to the room was a few steps away when Rhys saw something moving by the corner of his eye. He turned around slowly. It could have been his imagination, he did that sometimes. Scared himself into thinking Jack was back because of a random shadow that turned out to be his own hair. But it had been different this time, the figure was white and tall, walking somewhere behind him.

Rhys took a few steps back, looking at the space between two walls that lead somewhere else. He moved close to the wall and took a peek at the room behind it, ready to hail ass if he saw more skags.

The room had no skags, only a tall hooded figure with a black circle at the face. Was it a face? Rhys couldn't tell. But he could feel it was staring right back at him.

Neither one of them moved, as if they were measuring each other, deciding which one was supposed to run after whom. Rhys already knew the answer, his heart was beating fast, trying to jump out of his chest to escape the upcoming slaughter.

The thing had a clear advantage; it was very tall, tall enough to make the high walls make sense. It was entirely white except for the black circle he presumed was its face. It had no arms or legs, like a giant ghost.

Rhys heard something stepping closer to him from behind. He turned around with a jolt, expecting to see another one of those things. But it was only Fiona.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked, mostly annoyed, even though there was a hint of concern behind it.

Before he could say anything, something started clicking loudly behind them. Rhys turned around to see the alien… monster… freak thing moving away quickly with surprising efficiency.

“Hey!” Rhys started running after it. Somewhere behind him Fiona said something he didn't understand before chasing the thing too.

It crossed hallways and passed through open doors, dodging furniture with ease while the two humans did their best not to let it go out of sight. The thing seemed to know where it was going.

“Why are we running after… after… that?” Fiona asked eventually.

“I don't know!” Rhys answered “Looked like the right thing to do”

The alien stepped under a purple pipe, identical to the one that they had used before. The two of them watched as the white thing was sucked inside of it.

“Why... can't there be… stairs in this place?” Rhys complained, hands on his knees as he tried to breath. 

He ran a hand through his hair, took a deep breath and stepped under the pipe.

“Trust me... the stairs are no better” Fiona was right beside him, looking like she meant every word.

Next thing he knew he was up in the air again. Willing himself not to scream he shut his eyes closed, grateful that the only thing he could hear was a strong wind. No machinery.

He fell on his stomach. The ground was hot, warmed by the sun. Rhys propped himself up, he's in the open, the blue sky stretched above him without a single cloud. The wind was strong enough to have him struggling for balance. They were in some kind of concrete ceiling, he didn't have to look down to know they were somewhere really, really high.

Fiona was only a few steps away from him, with her eyes already set on the thing they were chasing.

The alien had their back to them. The mask was to the other side so that looked like a safe guess.

Rhys exchanged a look with Fiona and they slowly made their way close to it. They had no way of really knowing but it didn't seem to have noticed them. Rhys made a jumping movement with both his arms, Fiona gave him a thumbs up.

He made a countdown with his fingers. 3...2...1…

Rhys ran to the alien and tried to push it down to the floor, but when he grabbed it the thing seemed empty. Instead of pushing it down, he felt himself grasping at fabric. When he pulled, the white material came with the his hand like a curtain.

By his side, Fiona kept pulling so he did the same.

Before he could understand what was happening the thing lost its balance and tumbled to the ground as originally intended. Rhys and Fiona hurriedly started pushing the fabric up, revealing long wood sticks and then feet. A person in stilts.

“What the-”

The person was struggling, trying to untangle themselves from the white fabric without success. Rhys and Fiona pulled the costume all the way up, each one of them quickly grabbing a hold of one of her arms.

It was an old lady. She had a red piece of fabric covering her head, leaving only her face visible. Her skin was sun burnt and her dark eyes were staring at them angrily as she spoke in a strange accent.

“You can't touch me! I am blessed” she repeated it again and again like a prayer.

The woman was way stronger than she looked, she kept kicking and contorting herself to throw them off balance. It made the task of holding her arm down a very hard one.

“We are not gonna hurt you” Fiona said “We just want to leave this place, tell us how to do it and we'll leave you alone”

She stopped struggling and looked Fiona up and down. Her thin lips cracked into a smile.

“I know you can't hurt me...” she said “because I am blessed! You can't touch me! I am blessed!...”

The newly started fit of kicks got Rhys by surprise and her arm escaped his grip. The old lady used the arm to punch Fiona in the cheek and ran to a control panel Rhys hadn't even noticed was there. The stranger managed to press a button before Rhys and Fiona pinned her back to the ground.

“What did you do?” Rhys demanded.

“Just distracted them so they won't kill us! That's what I did” she wasn't struggling anymore, at least not as strongly. She was just staring at them like they were the biggest idiots she had ever seen. “They can never know you were here”

“Who are-” Rhys started.

“That works for us.” Fiona's cheek had already started to swell, and Rhys felt she was using every ounce of her self control to not give the other woman a matching bruise. “Tell us how to get out of this planet”

“Are there any ship hangars here?” Rhys asked.

“I don't know what you're talking about” she answered coldly. The woman turned to Fiona “But there is a place, it is said to guard the secret of a magic chest. And it holds the treasure of...” Rhys felt his mood lift up, finally a treasure, that's what- “connecting places”

“Ah, not this bullshit again” Why was this planet filled with teletransport machines? Why wasn't it filled with money as promised?

“Rhys!” Fiona widened her eyes at him.

“This treasure can take you wherever you need” the old lady continued undisturbed “It was made by them, but they don't use it anymore.”

“Who are they?” Rhys asked, prompting a mean smile from the old woman.

“The Eridians, of course. Was this boy raised in the outbacks? For my blood...”

Rhys and Fiona were stunned in silence, so she just kept talking. The way she talked about them like they were some kind of gods… it just creeped him out.

“The chest only appears once one of them is in the planet. It shouldn't take long, you two made a mess in this station, opened all the doors, activated the Twister, fired all the alarms, you _hurt my dogs_ … They must have sent someone already. But I'll handle them. They trust me, they blessed me!”

Her eyes went glassy, as if speaking about how much the aliens cared made her the happiest person in the world. From what little they knew, she could just might as well be.

“We got this part” Rhys mumbled. “And we're sold about the chest thing, just tell us where it is and we'll get out of your hair”

“It will let you know when it appears, it will let everyone know.” the woman assured “You have to leave now. And you can't leave any tracks, I will kill you before I let them find you. If I can find you, they can find you. Do not let me find you. Are we clear?”

“Hey, you're in no position to-” Rhys was abruptly interrupted when a blinding white light crossed the horizon, bringing with it strong winds that carried leaves and dust. He used his hands to shield his eyes instinctively, trying not to be carried by the wind. Somewhere on the corner of his mind he was aware that weird old lady was now free.

He could feel things scratching any skin exposed to the small objects. Behind the howling of the wind he heard Fiona's voice, screaming something unintelligible.

The wind stopped and Rhys let his hands fall to the ground. He saw a beacon of light come from the sky, it touched the top of one of the mountains far away before disappearing.

“Your ride is here” the old woman announced from somewhere behind him.

When he turned around, she was nowhere to be seen.

\---

“That... was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me.” Rhys said. “Is that our ride? The light… thing? How are even gonna-”

He couldn't believe the lady was telling the truth. But that beacon was unlike anything Rhys had ever seen before. It had to be alien made. And it could really be a way out of here.

“That weirdo jumped out of the roof.” Fiona said “Who does that?”

Rhys got up and walked to the edge of the floor, where Fiona was looking down.

“She jumped from here?” There was something down there, way down there. Too down there for comfort. It was another room in the station, as the woman had called the place, a floor below them.

A tree had fallen on what once was a glass ceiling, breaking the entire thing. The tree was still there, rooting on the broken glass. Someone had pushed all the strange furniture to one side and it looked like some kind of improvised garage now. Rhys could see the front of three cars from where he was standing.

“That lady is cra-”

“Get a car and leave! Now!” said someone from behind him. The old lady.

A hand on his back pushed him forward and the ground was suddenly not there anymore. For the second time that day he was harshly welcomed by the ground. This time he hit his head hard, the world was spinning as he tried to get up. His arms felt like jello and he just feel on his face again.

“I changed my mind, I don't like this planet anymore” he murmured under his breath.

Something exploded. Like fireworks.

He looked up. The old lady had a giant shotgun pointed at his general direction. There were two of them, actually, but he knew that couldn't be right.

“Just… leave!” she screamed. “They can't find you!”

Rhys felt a hand being put under his arm.

“C'mon Rhys” Fiona said as she helped him up “Let's get away from this FUCKING NUTJOB!”

She hauled him up, and Rhys did his best to keep his feet under himself as they walked towards a rusty blue pickup truck.

“I am going to just kill you two and get rid of the problem myself if you take a second longer to get… in that… car!” she fired again.

Fiona dropped him by he passenger door. He opened it and jumped inside the car as the old lady kept screaming and shooting. Fiona hopped in the driver's seat a second later.

“This thing is like a thousand years old” Fiona said as she turned the key.

The car started vibrating and Rhys couldn't be sure if the burst he heard was caused by it or if the old lady had shot again. He raised a hand to his face, there was something gooey in his forehead, he looked at his blood covered fingers in terror.

“I'm bleeding!”

The car abruptly moved back and stopped in the middle of the room.

“Shut up for a second” Fiona rolled down the window and put her head out. Rhys assumed she was trying not to hit the walls as she maneuvered the car to the only way out of the room, a dark tunnel going downwards. 

“...kill you with my bare hands, you hear me?” the old woman shot again and this time she hit the rearview, missing Fiona's face by a few inches. She watched in complete disbelief as the thing feel to the ground.

“Fuck you!” Fiona screamed as she drove the car down the tunnel's ramp.

The place was black from floor to ceiling, wide enough for only one car and endlessly long. The only light came from the car's headlights. Soon they couldn't hear the woman screaming or her shotgun anymore.

“I can't believe we just got our asses kicked by that old lady” Fiona said.

“An old lady and her shotgun, don't diminish our struggles like that” Rhys opened the glove compartment, hoping to find something to wipe the blood off his face with now that the world had stopped spinning.

“Hey, there's water in here” Rhys grabbed one of the three bottles. He hadn't noticed how thirsty he was until then. He opened it and took a sip “Tastes like non-deadly water to me”

“What?”

“I mean… it's not poisoned and… doesn't smell like piss” Rhys explained.

Fiona gave him a weird look but didn't say anything.

Rhys had chugged the entire bottle down before they reached the end of the tunnel. Fiona suggested this whole thing might be a trap, her fingers tapping the wheel anxiously as she drove them further and further into it. Her hands were smearing it red with blood. Rhys assumed it was from the glass shards on the garage.

They eventually reached a closed gate. Rhys had just opened his door to go try to open it when the gate started moving by itself. He closed the door.

The gates opened to the blinding light of day. They revealed a dense forest, cut by a narrow dirt road. The place sounded alive, with birds chirping and insects doing their noisy existing business.

Fiona drove the car into the road and stopped there as the gates closed behind them.

“You think that lunatic was telling the truth?” Fiona said “About the chest?”

“It sounds a lot like that box on the vault that got us here in the first place so...” Rhys shrugged “It's the best plan we have.”

“I don't like this. Why would she just give us this car? Why didn't she just kill us?”

“She did try” Rhys pointed, but he knew Fiona had a point.

“And that light thing…”

“Look, worst comes to worst it's a trap and we'll have to fight off an army of the blessed elderly” Rhys said “We defeated a Vault monster, I think we can deal with anything this planet throws at us.”

“Yeah, I guess” Fiona sighed.

“All we have to do is drive to that mountain and find a big, magic chest to take us back to Pandora.” Rhys said “We'll be laughing about this whole thing by tomorrow”

As the car started moving again neither one of them mentioned how they had Gortys and Loader Bot, Sasha and a bandit king to help when they opened the Vault. Or all the sheer, dumb luck involved in the process. They didn't say it out loud, but Rhys knew they were both measuring their odds. And they sucked.

\---

Hot air entered through the open window as the green landscape passed fast besides them. Or as fast as the noisy pile of junk of a pickup truck they were driving allowed them to go anyway. 

Rhys had been trying to explain to Fiona the Hyperion finger-gun game for about half an hour now, but she was struggling to understand how people didn't cheat with the bullet count and the overall rules of gun upgrading.

The road seemed endless, which was good because the mountains where nowhere near the station and they would be completely lost without a path to follow. Between all the turns the road took and the tall trees obscuring their view, all they could do was hope it was taking them in the right direction.

“Who even controls that? Why would you not just lie and say you upgraded it into a submachine?”

“It's an honor thing, it's not winning if you cheated” Rhys said, rolling his eyes “And the goal is usually courtesy losing anyway so there's no point in making up gear”

“Ah, I forgot about the courtesy losing thing” Fiona said. “How did Hyperion even work if you had all these rules and- oh great, look at that”

Fiona pointed her hand forward and let it fall back on the wheel.

Just a few miles in front of them there was a fork in the road. It was now two separate, individual paths. Nothing in any of them to difference one from the other.

“The signalization in this place sucks.” Rhys said. The car slowed down as they got closer to the fork. “We should sue”

“Sure, sue the aliens. You'll make that… that crazy woman kill us and we won't have to deal with this shit” Fiona let her head fall to the wheel “I can't believe this is happening”

“Maybe... we should just pick a random one” Rhys said with a shrug “Let's go with the one to the right so we'll go in the right way”

Fiona raised her head and sighed.

“I'm gonna sue _you_ for that… awful pun” Fiona said, but she put the car running again and drove towards the path to the right “How did you even survive in Pandora with that kind of decision making?”

Rhys forced a small laugh.

“It was a close call”

The road forked again and one more time in the way ahead. They took all the rights, so it would be easier to come back and start over if they had to. The mountains were visible above the trees every now and then, all the three of them. They needed to go to the middle one, which wasn't the highest, but would still be quite the challenge to climb without a car. Rhys was extremely glad that wouldn't be their case.

Every new branch they had to choose seemed to make them more tense. The light conversation from before was quickly replaced by a dense silence, interrupted only by the car's noisy motor. Rhys knew the silence was also related to the growing hunger he was feeling, and he knew Fiona must have been feeling too.

She was the one to finally break the silence.

“You never told me what happened… after the Helios crash”

Rhys turned his head away from the window to look at her.

“Neither did you” he answered. That was a very evasive answer, he knew that, but to his defense, that really wasn't a subject he was interested in discussing. So he was fairly relieved when Fiona started talking.

“There's really not much to tell, me and Sasha… we went back to Hollow Point” she said, eyes focused on the road. “We tried to go back to Felix' place but… things were different. We ended up spending more time in the caravan, doing small cons, selling those stuff we got from the arena.”

“What do you mean things were different?”

Fiona hesitated, as if deciding whether or not she should tell the truth.

“Some bandits took over the town.” she said quietly “Never had happened before, but the bandits have been growing stronger since... since the Helios crash. I heard several towns were going through the same thing”

Rhys had not known that, but thinking about it now, it made a lot of sense. Without Hyperion sending loaders to kill them every other day the bandits could only get stronger. And what better target than the small towns of Pandora? He could feel the blood draining away from his face. More deaths to his name than he already knew.

“We held a funeral” Fiona admitted “For you, Vaughn, Gortys, Loader Bot… Sasha thought… we thought you should have one.” she laughed, but it was forced and quick “Turns out everyone was alive so… waste of time”

Rhys imagined Fiona and Sasha burying rocks with their names on the backyard, putting flowers on them every once in a while. What a weird thing, knowing he had a grave somewhere in Pandora.

“And one day I closed a deal. A battery. For only a few bucks.” Fiona said accusingly.

Rhys knew exactly where the hatred came from. He had put an advertising on the radio trying to sell some of the shit he had gathered from the Atlas facility and what little he took from the crash place. He was making enough money to buy food and pain killers, which was all he needed at the time, really. One day someone left a message on the echo device he was using as a phone, they wanted to buy a battery for their sister.

“Hey, I had no way to know it was broken” Rhys said “And I was going to give you your money back”

“That thing exploded, Rhys! Someone could have died!” Fiona said, eyes open wide with pretend disbelief. This was all water under the bridge, really. He was pretty sure it was. “You still haven't by the way. Given my money back.”

“Hmm… I was kinda busy being dragged through the desert?” Rhys said.

He had made the delivery and received the payment without ever hearing the buyers voice. But a few days later the echo ringed and he heard an out of her mind Fiona screaming in anger about how all of her things were on fire. They agreed to meet the day after that once both of them realized who the other was, but apparently they weren't the only ones in the conversation. Loader Bot got there first.

“It was nice to know you weren't dead.” Fiona admitted.

“Oh, thank you! I knew you were alive all along so…” Rhys said, trying to sound nonchalant. 

Fiona rolled her eyes.

The silence was only broken by the car's loud engine, as Rhys debated whether or not he should start talking. Or to be more exact, trying to convince himself to do so. He just didn't think Fiona would believe him, but keeping it a secret would only make it worse.

“I really thought you and Sasha had left with Scooter's ship.” he finally said, it wasn't a lie, but it also wasn't the most important part of the truth “I was really pissed about it.”

Fiona eyed him for a second, a strange expression on her face that made him look away.

“Yeah, it was nice we got that out of the way.”

  



	3. Chapter 3

The sun had started to hide behind the top of the trees when they stopped for the day. The mountains seemed a lot closer now, they must have covered almost half of the way in a single day. If they kept this rhythm, and if the woman hadn't lied, they'd be back in Pandora by tomorrow.

Fiona parked the pickup truck in a clearing. It was small, but was also decently hidden from the road and safe to spend the night. Last thing they needed was a visit from animals or other people (like the trigger happy maniac they found before) while they slept.

Fiona opened the door and jumped out of the car, the sound of dry leaves crushing under her feet made a couple of birds fly away from a nearby tree. She heard Rhys' door open and close.

She was curious as to why he didn't want to go into detail on what happened after the Helios crash. Honestly, she still couldn't quite believe he was alive. Sasha had wanted to keep looking for their friends – Rhys, Vaughn, Loader Bot – Fiona was the one to press her to give up already. Vaughn had probably got shot in the face the second it all went to hell. And if the crash hadn't killed Rhys, she was sure Pandora would. Vaughn had already shared his miracle with them, she was surprised Rhys had not started to gloat about his already.

Especially after she heard how banged up the entire ordeal left him. He was hiding something and it bugged her. Especially since last time he was hiding something, it almost got all of them killed.

“Hey, Fiona, come look at this” Rhys said from somewhere behind the truck, distracting her from her thoughts.

“Did you find food?” Fiona asked as she walked to the back of the car.

“Maybe.” Rhys was messing with something on the pickup's tray. The tray was covered with a black tarp, and there was clearly something beneath it. Fiona could see the silhouette of boxes, some smaller, softer thing, maybe ropes and fabric. He was trying to get rid of the tarp by undoing one of the many knots holding it together.

Fiona picked another one and started trying to loosen it. She would be very disappointed if she didn't get some food out of this. Her stomach was not satisfied with the water bottle she drank. Yes, she could go a few more days with water and whatever they found in the forest, but she really didn't want to.

She was gripping her lips as tight as that stupid knot. It was more a ridiculous huddle of several knots, old and indifferent to her efforts, than a normal knot. It didn't seem to loosen at all.

“Ugh, this is not working” Rhys threw his hands up “I'll look for something sharp in there”

Fiona nodded as Rhys walked away. She tried to pull on another knot but the thing didn't budge either. No, that couldn't be the way to open this thing. She took a step back and decided to climb the tray, look for a zipper or something.

Fiona put a foot on the tray and something moved under it. She heard something like a snarl as she lost her balance and feel back to the ground with a yelp.

“Fiona?” Rhys called from inside the car.

She stared at the sky, feeling the sting of her scratched hands hitting the dirt.

“I'm fine” She propped herself up on her elbows in time to see the skag jump from beneath the tarp. “Aahhh! Not fine, not fine!”

She moved her legs and arms frantically, trying to move away from the skag. It looked her straight in the eyes and started wiggling its tail. In a very threatening manner. Kinda. From this close Fiona could see how weirdly soft this weird skag lookalike was. Fluffy even.

“Where the hell did this come from?” Rhys said from somewhere behind the car.

“It came from under the tarp! That crazy-” The back of her head hit a tree.

The animal saw the opportunity and jumped on top of Fiona. It opened its mouth and she turned her face away, eyes closed and bracing herself for death once again.

The skag licked her face, making her let out a breath in sheer disbelief.

“What...?” Fiona uttered. Her hands were up, about to do… something. She let them fall to the ground.

The skag moved away from her and went to Rhys' direction. He let out a cry and jumped on the tray in a mess of limbs and awkward movements.

Fiona got up and watched as the skag barked at him, propping itself on its hind legs with the other two paws on the car. And why wouldn't it stop wiggling its tail like that? Skags didn't do that.

Rhys finally managed to stand on the tarp. She heard something rip.

“What are you doing?” Rhys said, not even trying to hide the fear in his voice “Climb a tree before this skag eats your legs!”

The animal had now taken to run around the car with their tongue hanging from their mouth, trying to find a way up. Not really the actions of something dangerous.

“This is not a skag… it's a dog” she said, eyeing the thing curiously.

Rhys turned to her, looking away from the skag for the first time.

“Like- like a domestic skag?” he asked, frowning. More confused than scared for his life this time.

“No, like an actual dog” Fiona watched as the animal gave up on the pickup and slowly walked in her direction. It seemed to have noticed all the running was scaring them. “They tried to take these to Pandora but they couldn't handle the weather or something. Domestic skags are called dogs after these things.”

Fiona held out her hand as the dog got closer. Rhys whined something about people not valuing their limbs. She ignored him.

The animal sniffed her hand hungrily. When it noticed she wasn't offering any food it sat down in front of her.

“See? Harmless” Fiona said, amused. Looking from this close the difference between the dog and a skag was pretty obvious. The animal in front of her was just as big as a skag, but slimmer and less gross. No spikes, just black, shiny fur all over. Staring at the animal's brown eyes, Fiona could understand why someone would want one of these at home.

Rhys let out an embarrassed laugh.

“I may have...” he cleared his voice “overreacted a little”

Rhys was apparently convinced that the creature posed no harm, as he carefully tried to get down of the tray. He did take special care to not damage his precious limbs.

The dog was looking at her expectantly, still wiggling its tail.

“I don't have anything for you” she murmured, kneeling in front of it. She tentatively took her hand to the dog's head and petted it.

“That crazy lunatic said we hurt her dogs right?” Fiona said, holding one of the dog's ears and lifting it “This must be the one that ran away.”

Rhys stopped in the middle of swinging a leg out of the pickup truck.

“You mean one of the _dogs_ that almost ate my face?”

“Maybe”

Fiona saw on the corner of her eye as Rhys feel out of the tray and got up as if nothing had happened, beating the dust out of his clothes.

“What are we going to do with it?” Rhys said, slowly walking towards them and making a point of staying behind Fiona.

The dog laid on the ground with its tummy up, mouth open and tongue hanging from it.

“Aww, its a girl” Fiona said, rubbing the animal's chest. This thing was so adorable, how could they ever have been scared of it?

“Oh no, you want to keep it, don't you?”

Fiona turned to look at him.

“You gotta admit she's cute” she said “And besides, we could use a... guard dog” it ended up sounding more like a question than she intended, and yes, it was kind of a stretch to see the dog as defense, but what was see supposed to say? That they ditch it in the woods?

Rhys squinted, clearly not liking where the conversation was going.

“It almost ate my face too” he reminded her dryly.

Fiona sighed.

“We keep her and I'll forget about the money you own me.” she said. It wasn't that much money anyway, and she hadn't really expected to get it back.

Rhys considered her for a moment and then put his hands on his waist, Hyperion style.

“Now _that's_ a deal I can make.” he said.

\---

It was completely dark by the time they managed to see everything that was on the tray. Rhys had opened a hole in the tarp when he stood on top of it and they just finished tearing the thing apart. Fiona did it partly out of spite, thinking about the old lady. Even Pandorians didn't shoot people that where already doing what they wanted them to do, come on, that woman was unreasonably violent.

There were some blankets, ropes and lots of a yellow seed that wasn't edible. They tried, it really wasn't. They dumped the three large boxes of it on the ground. No weapons, no echo devices. But they did find some food. A smaller box contained about a dozen jars full of red jam. Fiona tried some, it was very sweet and didn't kill her on the spot so she called it a win. There was also a big water gallon and what looked like a first aid kit.

“Why did she let us take this car if she had all these things in it?” Fiona asked, thinking out loud as she ate the jam sitting in the tray. Rhys was sitting besides her, making a way bigger mess with the jam than he needed to.

“She's crazy, who cares” he answered, clearly more interested in putting down as much food as he could.

The dog was running around, going after bugs and the occasional bat that crossed her way. Fiona was amazed with how she could barely see them, the insects, everything was so small in this planet. She was also slightly worried the dog could attract some unwanted attention, but she didn't do anything about it. She was just being paranoid.

Fiona put down her half finished jam and went to sleep inside the car, that thing was just way too sweet for her. Rhys on the other hand, was still happily devouring his second jar. She saw through the rearview mirror as the dog took her place besides him and dropped her head on his lap. What an adorable creature.

Sasha would love this dog, it's a shame she would never see it. They couldn't take it to Pandora, obviously. But maybe Rhys could take a picture of it. She would like it, Sasha always wanted one of the gross pandorian “dogs”, she would love the real deal.

She put her hat over her eyes and waited for sleep to come.

\---

Fiona woke up the sound of Rhys' voice telling someone to get away from him. She felt panic growing inside of her, the clearing must be more dangerous than she thought, someone had found them.

She took the hat away from her face and pulled out her pistol. Fiona looked at the objects in her hands, the hat was blurred at the edges and her hands were far from steady. Her sight was shaky and there was a drumming behind her eyes. Like she was floating, it didn't feel real. Something else was wrong.

She opened the door and tried to step out of the car but she instantly feel to her knees. Her head was spinning. It occurred to her she must be dreaming.

The thought made her calmer, but she still got up to see what the hell was making Rhys yell like that, supporting herself on the car (because standing straight was an impossible task at the moment) she stumbled to where his voice came from.

He was sitting on top of the grains they had discarded earlier, holding down his mechanical arm like his life depended on it. He was screaming to someone in front of him, someone that wasn't there.

“I killed you!” he cried “You can't hurt- anyone anymore!” his voice was shaky and Fiona didn't have to see his face to know he was scared to death.

A movement behind the trees caught her eyes, the sound of dry leaves cracking. How weird that someone would be waking in the woods at this time. It didn't seem important, she needed to focus on something… what was it again?

“That's not true!” Rhys yelled, startling her. Right, that's what she needed to focus on. Fiona took her eyes away from the forest.

“Who are you talking to?” she asked, but Rhys didn't seem to notice her at all. There was something with Rhys and talking alone but she couldn't remember what it was. It couldn't be that important.

She saw the person in the forest again, this time she glimpsed a red headband and bone earrings, the person was limping.

Fiona felt her heartbeat picking up.

“Sasha?”

She glanced at Rhys before letting go of the car and going towards the dense forest behind it. He could deal with his ghost alone. What a weird dream to be having.

She leaned on a tree to avoid falling on her face again. It was Sasha and she was hurt, she needed to help, she had to talk to her-

“Stay away from me, Fiona!” her sister yelled.

Fiona let go of the tree and stumbled forwards, desperately trying to see her.

“Sasha, stop!” she answered “Why are you running?”

Something moved behind her and Fiona turned around quickly.

Sasha was there with blood staining the side of her shirt. She didn't seem to mind it, as she looked at Fiona with disgust in her eyes.

“What-” Fiona tried to walk to her but she tripped on something and feel, Sasha could have easily caught her, but she took a step back.

Fiona looked up at Sasha, not even trying to get up or hide the hurt look in her eyes.

“You're bleeding, how-”

“What do you care if I'm hurt?” she said calmly, her expression closed, unreadable “You only care about yourself”

Those words weren't new, Fiona had heard them before. Sasha had said that to her before. They lingered in the air for a long time before she felt herself answering.

“You know that's not true” the words came out of her mouth as if she was reading a script, she couldn't have helped it if she wanted. The cold ground beneath her seemed distant, she could almost believe she was back to the caravan, where they had this conversation for the first time.

“Isn't it? Then how come you want to bail on them? All of them? They need our help!” Sasha had never been so mad at her, Fiona could hear it in her voice.

She needed to wake up now, she really needed to wake the fuck up right now.

“We can't help any-” Fiona didn't bother to try to finish the phrase. She closed her eyes and turned to her side to avoid looking at Sasha.

“They are going to set the school on fire if we don't do anything, and Erin is still missing! We can't… we can't just... leave now!” she could hear the tears in Sasha's voice as well as she felt the ones rolling down her cheeks.

“Sasha, Erin is gone for too long now… I know you were friends in school but...”

“And what about Rhys and Vaughn and Loader Bot? Should we just leave them to their own luck while we try to pretend we're Vault Hunters?”

Fiona put her hands over her mouth. She didn't want to say that again, she couldn't do that to Sasha again.

“Sasha-” the word came out muffled.

“They're our friends, they are all we-”

Fiona felt the hand that was stopping her from speaking fall to the ground against her will. She felt an anger inside her chest that wasn't hers, because this wasn't fair. Sasha was being naive, thinking they could save everyone. Fiona was always the one that had to keep them grounded, to keep them alive. Sasha didn't understand that to stay alive, they couldn't be the heroes.

“Sasha, they're all dead! Erin is dead! And her father and her mother- there's nothing we can do!” she answered, and her voice was just as hateful “And we can't keep looking for Vaughn or Rhys either, you know they're dead too, everyone I- everyone we care about is dead!”

Silence.

An ugly sob escaped Fiona's mouth. It was over now, Sasha would say “okay” and leave, later they would plan the funeral. The funeral for Vaughn, Rhys, Erin and everyone else that was dead. She would wake up now. It was over.

She didn't expect the silence to be interrupted by Sasha's voice.

“Not everyone” she heard her sister fall to the ground.

Fiona turned her head to Sasha, propping herself up on her elbows. There was blood oozing from her torso and staining the forest's floor as she laid on her back, staring blankly at the sky.

“No, no, no, no, no” she crawled to her sister, sure that if she got up she would puke her insides “This is not what happens”

Fiona pressed her hands to the wound and her hands were covered in red, hot blood. Her heartbeat was thumping in her ears. _This isn't a dream._

Sasha's gaze was everywhere, blurry and half dead. Fiona gave up on the wound, taking her bloody hands to grasp her sister's instead.

“Sasha, look at me... Sasha!” she felt as a new wave of tears came, blurring her vision. “Don't leave me” she said, almost a whisper.

Sasha finally turned her eyes to her. She took Fiona's wrist and lifted it.

“You can come... with me”

Fiona looked at her, confused. And then she felt the cold metal of her pistol against her skin. She didn't remember putting it back on her sleeve, and she also didn't understand why it was cold. The pistol was never cold.

“Come with me” she repeated. Fiona pulled out the pistol.

Sasha's hand feel to the ground and Fiona continued stunned, looking at the pistol.

“Are you saying... do you want me to-” she said quietly, not even sure if the other would hear it.

“Come with me” Sasha looked back at the sky “Die with me”

Fiona gazed at Sasha, a frown forming in her face. This was wrong, too real to be a dream.

Her hand pointed the pistol at Sasha's head and Fiona didn't try to stop it. Because it didn't feel real enough to be actually happening. It had to be something in the middle, and she had to know where.

“I'm not dreaming, am I?” she asked, more to herself then to Sasha.

“Fi, what are you-”

She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the air and for a moment she was sure she had made the mistake of her life, maybe this whole thing had really happened.

But Fiona opened her eyes and looked down. She saw the dry leaves covering the forest ground. No blood, no Sasha.

Fiona brought a hand to adjust her hat but it wasn't in her head anymore. She used it to wipe the tears from her face instead, and moved to a sitting position. Her hands were shaking and the world was still not right, but at least now she had an idea of what was happening.

This was not a dream. But it also couldn't be real. Not real, definitely not real. Sasha would never-That's when it really hit her. Sasha was never here, Sasha was safe. She was in Pandora. And Rhys was alive, and so was Vaughn and Erin. They found her after all, wandering through the desert. They had found her friends, they were alive. They opened a Vault together. The city burnt down, but this wasn't real.

Hallucinations. Great. Somehow, they managed to get themselves drugged.

“Oh shit. Rhys.” she said under her breath.

Fiona clumsily got to her feet and headed back to the clearing.

Whatever drug it was, the effect was nowhere near the end. She could see shadows in the corner of her eyes and she did her best to ignore them, as well as control the tears still falling from her eyes.

“Not real, not real” she kept whispering to herself.

Rhys was at the same spot as before but now he wasn't screaming, he was hunched in on himself with his hands covering his ears.

“Rhys!” she called, prompting him to raise his head. “Whatever it is you're seeing, it's not real”

Fiona stopped in the middle of the clearing, swaying on her feet. The man on the ground continued to stare at her quietly with fear in his eyes.

“It's me, Fiona!” she insisted, the way he was looking at her was freaking her out. “Snap out of it already”

He didn't answer. What was it he was screaming about before? Something about he killing someone, and that they couldn't hurt… Realization hit Fiona. She knew what, no, who, Rhys was seeing.

“I can't” he finally said, voice no louder than a whisper “I can't fight you anymore”

“What-”

But she knew Rhys wasn't talking to her. His metal hand flew to his neck and next thing Fiona knew she was on her knees trying to push the limb away from him. But she was doing no more progress than his own flesh hand, scratching the metal pointlessly.

“Rhys, stop it!” Fiona urged “It's not real, no one's controlling you!”

The grip of the prosthetic was relentless, he would end up strangling himself dead if they didn't get it off of his neck right then. Fiona had to knock him out, that was the only way.

She saw one of the jam jars innocently abandoned on the pickup's tray. That must be what got them there in the first place. Fiona got up as fast as she could and grabbed it, sure that a hit to the head would be enough to make Rhys pass out.

“Let go! Rhys!” she tried one last time, ready to break the jar in his head. “Rhys, stop! Handsome Jack is not here, it's not real!”

That got his attention. He looked up at her and the hand lost its grip on his neck.

Fiona took a deep breath.

“Finally!” she dropped the jar as he struggled to breath.

“Fiona?” he croaked. His metal hand was laying on the ground while the other one tried to soothe the red marks left by his throat. He tried to talk again but all that came out were some clearly painful coughs.

Fiona let herself fall to the ground in front of him, sure that she would puke if she didn't sit down.

“We're hallucinating” she repeated “Don't believe your eyes”

Rhys' eyes widened as her words hit him, she couldn't tell if it was relief or something else.

He only nodded.

Fiona dragged herself to sit with her back to the car, telling herself it had nothing to do with the sudden urge to watch the woods she felt. _Not real._

There were shadows running in the forest. Faceless, featureless. They scared her in a different way than the Sasha illusion had, and she felt herself startling more often than she would ever admit.

Fiona couldn't tell how much time passed until Rhys spoke again.

“We should drink water, it will make… this wear out faster” his words were raspy and slow. Or maybe Fiona was hearing them slow, she couldn't tell.

Rhys got up and she didn't have the heart to mock his unsteadiness.

“How do you know that?” she said instead.

“Hyperion” was all he answered.

He sat back down with a bottle of water in each hand and gave one to Fiona. She struggled to open it, but managed the feat eventually. She took the bottle to her lips and was about to take the first sip when Rhys froze by her side. Fiona put the bottle down.

“What are you seeing?” she asked quietly, almost as if not to draw the hallucination’s attention to her.

“Fire… people in the- the flames” he said.

“I don't see anything, it's not real” Fiona tried to sound firm.

Rhys brought his knees to his chest, eyes still fixed on the burning people.

“What are you seeing?” he asked.

She opened her mouth ready to lie, to say she was seeing nothing, but she decided on the last moment to tell the truth.

“Some shadows. They are running from something” she gulped “Running for me.”

“Not real either.” he assured with a small nod.

They stayed like this for a long time. Drinking water and trying to take comfort with the assurance that what they saw wasn't real. The shadows were gone eventually, being quickly replaced by the rotting corpses of her loved ones, screams coming from the forest. Nothing felt as real as Sasha had, but it was still an endless parade of all that she feared in all the ways possible. Rhys told her none of it was real. What a crappy night to go through.

At some point he got up again and filled their bottles with the water from the galon, Fiona couldn't tell if the water was helping or not but she didn't hesitate to finish her second bottle.

Rhys saw Handsome Jack again. He didn't tell her, but she saw his eyes filling with anger and tears before he put his hands to cover his ears. She knew it was Jack and she told him it wasn't real. He saw a place that made him go unreachable again and Fiona had to slap him across the face to bring him back. He had eaten much more jam than she had, and Fiona started to suspect his hallucinations were more vivid than hers. He didn't tell her what place was that.

The night stretched on forever. Her eyes started to close several times, only to be abruptly woken by the sound of feet coming to her or the persistent felling something was going to happen if she feel asleep. Nothing ever did, aside from the hallucinations.

Fiona closed her eyes again, willing herself not to let anything wake her up this time. The ground was covered in blood and she was tired to look at it. At that point, she was too tired to be scared. It wasn't long before she heard something snapping in the forest, voices. She ignored them. Well, mostly. That's a real hard thing to do.

It was two men, they were talking to each other. She caught herself trying to make out their words more than once, but they were too low to hear. Was this hallucination supposed to annoy her to death or something?

The sound came from somewhere in the forest, but they were getting closer.

“Fiona, wake up” Rhys said, voice hoarse from disuse.

She sighed and opened her eyes, annoyed that he ruined her attempt at sleeping.

“What?” the word came out harsher than she intended it to.

“Is it the jam talking or are there people in the forest?”

Her eyes snapped open and she felt a rush of panicky energy going through her.

“People in the forest? You hear that too?”

Rhys' eyes went wide.

“Wait it's real?” he was clearly not expecting this answer.

Fiona got up supporting herself on the tray with her eyes on the trees, trying to catch a movement. The strangers were very close now, the low murmurs would be understandable if it wasn't for the loud drum of her heart in her ears.

She offered Rhys a hand and he took it. Somewhere on her side the dog was stretching, they must have woken her up.

Fiona went to get her. Her clouded mind didn't really care that the dog was way too big to carry. But it didn't matter, when she got to her, the dog ran to a different part of the clearing. It looked at the dense forest and started barking.

“No! Don't do that!” she whispered, walking to the animal “Bad dog! Bad dog!”

“Fiona, leave it there, let's go!” Rhys whispered. He was by the pickup.

“Just give me a minute” she answered, without taking her eyes away from the dog.

The strangers had stopped talking, they made no sound at all. Fiona felt the hairs on the back on her neck going up. They were being watched.

“C'mon girl let's-” she saw a face in the woods. And they saw her.

Fiona turned around, ready to run to the car, but before she could take a step back she hit something. No, someone. The person was taller than her and smelled bad, like sweat and mud. They threw her to the ground and the air was knocked out of her lungs.

_This feels very real._

“Found them!” they screamed at the person in the woods. It was a man.

Fiona tried to get up even though the world was spinning even harder than before. She was vaguely aware of the snarls coming from the dog. The man spoke again but his voice was muffled.

She managed to get to her knees before everything went black.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Rhys watched from behind the car as Fiona got punched across the face and feel unconscious to the ground. The man didn't seem to have noticed him yet, he was too distracted with the dog. The animal was barking and snarling at him, jumping around as if about to bite.

“What's taking you so long?” a woman's voice screamed from the forest. How many of they were there?

He had to do something now, while he wasn't heavily drugged _and_ outnumbered. Rhys looked around himself, maybe he could distract him and get Fiona. Whether they were regular muggers, kidnappers, more members of the Eridian freak club… Rhys wasn't planning to stick around to find out. He just had to find something, anything...

“They have a fucking dog here” the men crouched and tried to grab Fiona's feet, which prompted the dog to jump forward menacingly. The man backed away with a curse.

Rhys couldn't find anything. His heart was beating so fast he was afraid it would give him away.

“Just shoot it you dumbass, we have to get out of here” yelled another man.

Rhys' eyes widened. They had guns.

“I'm not gonna shoot a dog” his voice was indignant, as if the idea disgusted him.

“I'm going in there” the woman said.

_Oh no no no_

The man ran a hand over his face and crouched again, grabbed Fiona by the ankles. This time, when the dog moved forward, he didn't let go.

“You're no biter, are you?” the man chuckled to himself and then screamed to his friends “Martha told me there were two of them, we can't leave without the other one”

He had to do something. Now. Rhys got up, not so sure of what to do next. The trees around him started spinning and he steadied himself on the truck. He shouldn't have done this.

The man chuckled again.

“There you are, you little thief”

He took a step towards Rhys. The stranger had a long scar across his face, he was well built, taller than Rhys and he had a gun. He backed again without meaning to.

“Look, I'm sure this is a misunderstanding-” he put his palms up in a conciliatory gesture.

“Misunderstanding? You stole my grandmother's car” the man said.

Rhys' surprise was unfeigned. His grandmother? Was he talking about the old lady with a shotgun?

“What? We didn't steal anything” he said.

“It's right behind you, you idiot, come up with a better excuse”

Rhys opened his mouth to say something but shut it up when he glanced at Fiona. She was wide awake, staring straight at him with three fingers up.

3…2...1

Fiona kicked at the man's leg, it wasn't enough to bring him to the ground, but it was enough to make him look away from Rhys. The stranger eyed Fiona with surprise as she crawled away from him.

“Hel-” Rhys went to the stranger and punched him on the stomach with his metal hand before he could say anything, and when it worked he did it again, leaving the man doubling over himself but still standing.

He stood there with a smile on his face, thinking about something witty to say.

“Rhys, go!” Fiona told him as she stumbled to her feet.

“Oh… escaping, okay” Rhys backed away towards the car. The dog seemed to understand what they were doing as she ran to the pickup's tray and hid beneath what was left of the tarp.

“What the hell is going on here?” the woman had reached the clearing.

Rhys didn't turn to see her face, he only opened the car's door and jumped in. Fiona was already sitting at the passengers seat with a hand on her head.

“Still real?” Rhys asked, looking for the keys.

“Very real” Fiona mumbled, pointing a hand to the ash tray where she left them.

The two of them startled as the man reached Rhys' window and started pounding an angry fist at it. Rhys fumbled with the keys before finally managing to get the car moving. The man didn't give up. He punched the window again and again, running along the car.

“Go faster!” Fiona said.

“The trees! I'll hit the trees!”

The window cracked and Rhys let out a panicked sound as he tried to move away from it. Fiona raised her arm beside him, she was pointing the pistol at the man.

“Get your ugly face away from here!” she demanded.

And the man was gone. Rhys let out a relieved breath and Fiona put down the pistol.

“That was clo-”

“You are not leaving!” the woman screamed from the clearing.

A loud noise echoed through the air, a rocket launcher being fired. Rhys hit the breaks on instinct, watching as the missile flew above them.

“That's bad” Fiona said.

The man got back to the window smiling smugly, saying something Rhys couldn't understand.

The missile hit a tree and exploded, setting everything around it on fire, but ultimately only clearing the way for the car and making it impossible for anyone to follow on foot. Rhys just loved when problems handled themselves like this.

The shock dissolved away from his face.

“Thanks!” Rhys said, starting the car and smiling at the man on the window as he was quickly left behind.

Rhys dodged the trees as best as he could, which wasn't that well, the car must have gotten some fresh scars from his crappy driving. But they got to the road safe and sound.

He eyed the rearview to see if they were still being followed, but the thing wasn't there anymore.

“Great” he looked at the dirt road in front of him, it was ten times more scary at night. He drove towards the mountains.

“What's great about this, kiddo? Your life sucks!”

Rhys flinched at the sudden voice. Jack. The blue hologram was laying on the hood of the car with his legs crossed. No, not a hologram, a hallucination.

“Not again” somewhere in the back of his head a voice pointed out that the drug effect should be over by now, he thought it was already over.

Rhys tilted his head up, wondering if this situation could get any worse. He wasn't real, no need to freak out, it was just the drug waving its last goodbye “Get out of my way, I'm trying to drive”

“Rhys?” Fiona said.

“Look who's all bossy and angry” Jack mocked, pouting.

“Look who's not real!” Rhys screamed back, pressing buttons to try to turn on the windshield wipers. He wasn't that sure the pickup still had those.

This prompted a fit of laughter from Jack.

“Hm… Maybe- maybe I should drive” Fiona was staring at him worriedly.

Jack disappeared and reappeared sitting on the other side of the hood, in front of Fiona.

“Ahh… I missed you, kiddo, I'm not gonna lie.” he took a deep breath, seemingly wiping a tear from his eye before he said more seriously “I'm as real as I've ever been, Rhysie. In your head. Just like old times”

“No, I'm fine. I can handle this” Rhys said to Fiona, shaking his head. Drug Jack couldn't be that different from Holo Jack, ignoring him, he would eventually go away. At least he hoped so.

“I mean, what did you think would happen? With you walking with that- that eye in your pocket the entire time? It's like you were asking me to find a way back”

“Oh shit” this was Fiona. Maybe he should just ignore them both.

“C'mon just say it, you missed me too. Say it” Jack went back to laying on the hood, looking at Rhys “Say it!”

He flinched as Jack's voice went serious, like a real order. Rhys was staring at the road but was paying little to no attention to it. His entire focus was on not paying attention to Jack.

“Rhys-”

“I'm fine, Fiona!” he snapped. He noticed then Fiona had turned to look at the road behind them.

“No, that's not what I- they're back. With a car.”

Rhys could hear the low rumble of a motor, a car getting closer. He made the pickup go faster.

“You won't admit it even to yourself, will you cupcake? You need me, as simple as that” Jack had that awful, friendly but smug smile on his face. The one that everyone on Hyperion wanted to copy, the one Rhys had learned to hate.

“After the Helios crash, on the Atlas station- No, no, no. That's a secret, you don't wanna know about that. I'll keep my promise, I'm a man of my word you know that. But you were the one to ask for my help, don't forget about that. You owe me one”

“What did you do? You took a turn to the left!” Fiona said.

“I… what? W-what are you talking about?” Rhys wasn't sure who he was talking to.

“The road, Rhys! We're gonna get lost!”

“Oh-ho-ho, I'm not about to spill the beans, kiddo. All that time you don't remember, you don't _want_ to remember. The cybernetics- you made me promise never tell you where they came from. Because you knew I would be back, and you knew your pitiful little self couldn't handle it”

“I don't know what you're talking about”

“Shit, Rhys. Ignore the drug! You're going too fast, they lost us, slow down!”

“Of course you don't, there's like six months in your life that you have no idea what happened” Jack said.

And Rhys knew at least this part was true, he was acutely aware of the time gap in his memory. One moment he was at the Atlas station, swallowing pain killers like candy just to function and next thing he remembers he's planning a trip to the Helios crash to get things to sell. He didn't realize what happened until someone complimented his echo eye, asked him where he got them and he couldn't answer. He didn't know.

“It's hilarious- I mean, just- just look at your face. You're like uuugh I'm gonna cry stop being mean- Ha, it's like, like that time-”

Rhys was straying off the road. He didn't even notice it until Fiona abruptly grabbed the wheel to stop the car from hitting a tree. Rhys panicked and the car died.

“That's it. We're changing seats” Fiona sounded beyond angry “Now!”

Rhys shook his head, looking at his white knuckles gripping the wheel, the metal fingers had left a dent on it.

“No, they'll get to us, I can do it” Rhys looked around, Jack was gone. He took a hand to turn the car back on but Fiona stopped him by the wrist.

“No, you can't” she said “You're pale as a ghost and your hands are shaking. They're far behind us, you'll get us killed before they do.”

As if Fiona's words had called for it, Rhys heard the roar of a motor. But the sound didn't come from the road, it came from the forest. And it didn't sound like it was just one car.

“Turn on the car” Fiona said, taking her hand away.

Rhys turned the key and the car made a sound but it didn't work. He did it again and one more time. He could see headlights now. At least three pairs of them. The car wasn't turning on.

“Ha-aha-ha it's not- it's not working” he saw a red light blinking in the panel but he didn't know what it meant, he had never seen a panel like that before. He put a finger on it, to see if the thing would offer a menu with an extended explanation. Nothing happened.

Fiona turned the key and the results were the same. The cybernetic eye was no use, it didn't even recognize it as a car. Rhys let his head fall to the wheel, which prompted a loud hunk from the car that startled the both of them.

“Ah, I'm gonna kill someone” Fiona said, rubbing a hand over her eyes and shaking her head.

A car came out of the forest and stopped in front of them, barring their way. Rhys leaned back on his seat as the second car came and did the same, followed by a third one. They were tall cars, jeeps. There were at least four people in the first car, Rhys could see their weapons from where he was.

“Then start now 'cause they don't look too friendly” he said tiredly.

\---

Rhys and Fiona were dragged out of their car and put on their knees in front of it, hands tied to their backs and two far from friendly armed men by their sides. They searched him for weapons and found the stun baton in no time.

Rhys didn't struggle, they were heavily outnumbered and he didn't feel like getting punched. Fiona, on the other hand, almost managed to escape, but she didn't. She got punched. Again. Her nose was bleeding. He was genuinely surprised her gaze wasn't setting things on fire as she watched them take away her pistol.

About ten people came out of the cars, all well armed and wary. Staring at Rhys and Fiona, the trees around them. The trio that had been chasing them before was nowhere to be seen, leading Rhys to think this was an entirely different group with entirely different motivations.

A door opened and closed on the car further away from them and Rhys watched as an old woman with a red cloth wrapped around her head made their way to them. At first Rhys thought it was the same old woman with a red cloth wrapped around her head as before, personally there to avenge her “stolen” pickup, but it wasn't her.

“So you're the two who have been causing us all this trouble, huh?” she had a kind smile on her face, which seemed wildly out of place. But she also stopped a few feet away from them, as if out of fear they might break their cuffs and jump on her, which seemed very appropriate. “Very well, the Ghosts will be pleased”

“The what?” Rhys asked. He looked at Fiona and she shrugged.

“You have angered gods, children, and they want you to explain yourselves.” the woman said calmly. Rhys remembered what the other old lady had told them, about the Eridians being on the lookout for him and Fiona. How she talked about them like they were divine. How she said they could never be found, that they would kill for it.

“So… you're not here for the pickup truck…?” Rhy tried.

“We're here to take you to them, so you can fulfill the destiny they have planned for you”

“Right” Fiona said “But how about you don't do that”

“This must be a misunderstanding. We just got here and we're trying to leave as fast as we can, we've never met any gods” Rhys was talking fast, words stumbling over each other.

“Exactly” Fiona said.

“So if you could let us-”

The woman took a step forward and Rhys shut his mouth. Even though her frame was small, she exhaled authority. Rhys was well taught on respecting those.

She crouched in front of them, head moving so that her gaze involved them both.

“I don't know what you did, but you've got their attention. You've got what everyone here has ever wished, be grateful, not fearful. You'll meet the Ghosts whether you want it or not.” she got up looking at the men besides him and Fiona “Take them”

\---

Rhys was very fearful as he and Fiona were thrown on the back seat of a jeep.

“Before you try anything, keep in mind they didn't specify if they want you alive or dead” warned a girl as she took the passenger seat. She was just a teenager, and Rhys wondered why they would put a kid to guard them.

But it was irrelevant. Rhys wasn't planning to “try anything”. He was still mildly disoriented by whatever the hell was in that jam and mostly just craving a nap. Yes, there was also a restless energy running inside of him, but it was probably just a side effect of being about to be handed to aliens for an unknown offense.

Were the aliens mad they killed the Traveler? Maybe just annoyed they invaded their… facility… place… thing? What did they want Rhys and Fiona for?

He tried not to think about it as the car started moving. Surely they wouldn't let this go that far, they would find a way out of this one, just like they did every other time.

“So what's up with the red bandanas?” Fiona asked, tone casual “Is it a trend 'round here or…?”

The sun had started to rise, allowing Rhys to see the bruises on her face, the bags under her eyes. She had lost her hat at some point, and there was a dry leaf hanging from her hair. He couldn't be looking much better. No wonder they thought the teenager would do.

“They're the sign of the blessed, those who speak with the Ghosts” answered the driver coldly.

“Bullshit” Fiona said. The word sounded like a dare.

Rhys sent her a questioning look. Was she trying to get killed?

“Is this what's gonna happen?” Rhys asked, trying to distract them from Fiona “They want to... bless... us?”

The girl laughed.

“Nah, I don't think so.” she said “They're just curious, I think. Everyone is. Where you came from… why you're here… My dad said you'd be dangerous. You don't look dangerous.”

“Yes, exactly!” Rhys leaned forward and the girl turned to look at him with a small smile on her face “We're not dangerous, we just want to get back to our friends. They are dangerous, veeery dangerous.”

Rhys took a deep breath, pretending to consider something.

“Y'know what? Let us go now and you're forgiven. We won't say a thing to them.” he said “One time offer”

The girl considered him.

“You're funny” she finally said.

Rhys sat back on his seat letting out a huffed breath. It was worth a shot.

“Maybe we should tell them” Fiona said. The man driving groaned.

“Tell them… what?” he didn't really know where this was going but Fiona sounded like she had a plan.

“About our teletransporting device” she said, lowering her voice as if to stop the other two from listening. They could definitely listen.

“No, you can't tell them about it. It's too much power for them” Rhys eyed their captors, the girl was listening “Dominating the universe isn't for anyone”

“If they let us go maybe… just maybe… we could share it” Fiona continued “Let them know our secret hiding place in the mountains...”

“Oh, you mean the chest that the Ghosts keep on the mountain? That's not yours. Nice try though.” the girl said. She was smiling, looking like she was having the time of her life “Everyone says it's the only way out of the planet. Would be a sweat deal. You know, if everyone didn't already know about it”

“Yani...” the man censured.

“What?”

“Don't talk to the prisoners”

The girl huffed and crossed her arms, but she didn't speak again.

\---

It wasn't long before the man told the kid to put bags over their heads. She only nodded and obeyed.

The blindness made the fear win over the tiredness and make Rhys' mind start to think for real. He was pretty sure his prosthetic limb could break the cuffs. But then what? He would jump out of a moving car? There were other cars behind them, that was a shitty plan. He had to be patient, wait for a better moment.

Rhys had no idea how much time passed when he was awaken by the car stopping. No idea for how long he slept either. He was pulled out of it by impatient hands that rushed him forward with unnecessary force. Rhys had no idea if they were taking Fiona with him or not.

A gun was pressed against the lower part of his back as he was taken to the inside of a building. They took the bag off of his head.

Rhys immediately recognized the insides of a small sheriff station, the blinds were firmly closed, leaving the place dark even though the lights were on. A woman was sitting by a desk, looking at some papers. Two men, other than his guard, stood next to him. There were a couple of empty cells by the farthest corner, he figured they would throw him there.

“Where's my friend?” he asked no one in particular.

“Right behind you” Fiona answered. And Rhys would never admit how relieved he was at hearing her voice.

She was brought to stand by Rhys' side and they exchanged a look.

“So… where are the aliens?” Fiona asked, looking around.

The woman with the papers raised from her chair, greeting the men by name. She had her dark hair pulled in a ponytail, and it bounced as she walked.

“We're keeping you two here for now” she said. “Long drive to their base, we're making a stop”

She uncuffed them and locked them in the cells. Most of the men left, only one of them stayed at the station. Just to make sure, the older one had said as he crossed the door. The woman returned to her papers.

The cell was small. No windows, no nothing. Just concrete floor and a metal “bed”. Rhys sat by the corner that divided his cell from Fiona's and she did the same, there were only metal bars between them.

“Do you have a plan?” he whispered, eyeing the woman's back cautiously.

“No, do you?”

Rhys shook his head. He searched the room with his echo eye but there was nothing to be seen. There was still no signal.

“Guess we'll have to wait till they try to take us” he shrugged “I don't think they know the metal arm is stronger than a regular arm. We could use that”

The woman raised her head from the desk.

“Hey, Chris, his arm is strong” she said.

“Noted” Chris answered from somewhere out of his sight.

The woman turned to them.

“Shut up” she returned to her work.

Rhys ran a hand over his face. They didn't talk anymore.

As the time passed Rhys started to feel the aftermath effects of the drug and the sleepless night. His head hurt and he was tired to death, but he couldn't bring himself to close his eyes when he knew they could show up to take them at any moment. Instead, he kept his mind running in circles to try and come up with a plan.

Fiona tried to pry some answers from the woman but she didn't achieve much.

He kept returning to what Jack had said. Fake, drug induced Jack. Not really him, he reminded himself. Rhys knew he hadn't been real, but a part of him still expected the blue hologram to show up at any moment, for the Jack shit show to start all over again.

He held the old echo eye in his hands for a long time. It was solid evidence that Jack was gone. Rhys kept it for comfort, and a reminder of the blind, reckless greed that got him to that situation in the first place. That's why he kept the eye. The hallucination lied, he would never free Jack from the eye, and most definitely he would never ask his help.

The girl from the car showed up with food eventually, but neither him or Fiona touched it. Rhys couldn't even think about food without having to fight off a wave of nausea.

Rhys laid down on the floor, the cold concrete made his head hurt less. He was this close to succumbing to sleep when he heard a gun firing. He lifted himself to a sitting position. More shots, people screaming.

The woman ran a hand over her face.

“Chris, go see what's happening. I don't have time for this.”

A door opened and closed, Chris was gone.

Fiona got to her feet and Rhys followed suit. He was too excited about this escape opportunity to be scared.

“You can't keep us here while the town is being invaded” Rhys said, holding the metal bars of his cell.

“Watch me” the woman said, without even lifting her head from her desk.

“You're just gonna let this people kill us them? We don't get a fighting chance?” Fiona said.

“Nope”

The door opened and closed fast, allowing the loud noises from the world outside enter the room for a second.

“Umm… Sheriff? We need your help out here” said a man's voice. Maybe it was Chris again, Rhys couldn't tell.

The sheriff got up rolling her eyes, mumbling something about a circus. She went to the door and out of their sight.

“Don't… try anything” she said before leaving.

Fiona turned to Rhys as soon as they couldn't hear her footsteps.

“Punch the lock” she said.

Rhys did so, but it didn't work.

He then used the metal arm to try to bend the bars. They were a lot harder to bend then they looked. Things were exploding outside, and the person with the loudest gun of them all was getting closer. The sheriff had left the door open, so everything sounded very much more urgent.

“Rhys, hurry up with that!” Fiona said.

“Almost… there...” Rhys answered, voice tense with the effort. His arm was making a weird noise it shouldn't be making.

He took his hand away to look at his progress. The bar was bent, but not nearly enough to allow anyone to pass. What was this thing even made of? He kept trying.

“Just another minute” he promised.

“She left the keys on the table, it's right there” Fiona said.

“You're not… helping...”

“Did you hear that?” Fiona asked.

Before Rhys could say anything a black dog entered the sheriff station. Rhys stopped trying to bend the bar.

“Dog! You're okay!” Fiona crouched, and the animal went straight to her. It took Rhys a moment to realize this was the dog from before. She turned to Rhys “We need to give her a name”

“Yeah, Fiona, sure. But let's focus on not dying right now” Rhys said, looking around in the hopes of finding something useful.

“Okay Mister Grumpy” Fiona rolled her eyes at him. She looked at the dog and pointed at the table by the opposite wall. “You think you can get that for me?”

The dog didn't hesitate, she went straight to the keys. Rhys frowned a little. He was no expert in the matter, but that couldn't be standard dog behavior. She took the keys in her mouth and dropped them in Fiona's hand, all covered in drool and gross.

“You're such a good girl!” Fiona said as she tried the keys on her cell's lock. The dog sat down, wiggling her tail. “Aha!”

The door opened and Fiona went to free Rhys.

“How did she even get here?” Rhys asked.

“Who cares? She just saved us” Fiona said as the door swung open.

They ran out of the station and saw themselves in a street surrounded by houses and small stores. All the windows were closed. Part of the people that where out were running for shelter, entering houses and locking the door behind them. The other part was armed and fighting back, and doing so loudly. With gunfires and screamed threats.

It wasn't hard to spot the source of the panic. Down below on the dirt street stood a woman with a rocket launcher and two men besides her. They were yelling orders to some people around them, pointing at rooftops and telling them to go into certain streets.

“...just hand us the thieves!” she yelled, firing her rocket launcher at a house for emphasis. The roof caught on fire and the structure started to tumble down.

“Oh crap, is that...?” Rhys asked. Those three looked a lot like their original pursuers.

Fiona adjusted her pace to an almost run.

“Yep, just keep walking, keep walking...” she said.

They ran up the street keeping themselves close to the walls, trying avoid people's attention.

The sun was setting behind the trees, and Rhys noticed he couldn't see the mountains anymore. Instead, he saw a white beacon pointing at the sky. It came from the ground, not too far away from them. They must already be on the mountains.

“Hey, look at that!” Fiona said, pointing at the sky “That beacon-”

“Yeah, it looks like the beacon from the chest.” Rhys said, looking up at the light. Finally something was working out.

Fiona smiled.

“We can get there before they even notice we escaped!”

Rhys nodded and they ran towards the light with the dog on their tail.

The people invading the town were violent and ruthless, but Rhys quickly noticed they weren't really killing anyone. They punched and yelled and fired at the sky or houses, but they didn't kill.

And they never even tried to approach him and Fiona, it was like every time they turned a corner everyone turned their eyes from them, invaders and victims alike. Maybe he was imagining it, maybe he was simply not looking at the right time, but it bothered him for some reason.

\---

The city was quickly left behind, and the sound of screams and shots was replaced by the sounds of insects and the stillness of the dark forest. They slowed down, walking carefully just in case someone with a gun was wandering through the woods.

The top of the trees made the beacon harder to see, but it didn't matter now. They were so close it looked like it was right on top of them.

Rhys caught glimpses of silver metal between the trees, something big. It looked like the chest was inside a building. It suddenly hit him that it could be a Vault, one with another vault monster inside. He looked at it with his echo eye in the hopes it would warn him of anything that could be inside.

He managed to download the plant, the building was way bigger than it seemed. Rhys looked for a chest in the middle of all the corners and rooms.

“Map… downloaded. This will be-”

He stopped on his tracks. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of life signs inside the silver building and- Oh shit.

“Stop!” Rhys said. He had almost failed to notice that the building was surrounded by some kind of force field. And that it was a palm away from his nose.

But it was too late, Fiona crossed it and the beacon shut down, leaving them in the dark. Rhys stood there quietly, waiting for the suddenly tense air around him to move.

“What happened?” she asked, voice low.

“You crossed a force field” Rhys was equally quiet “Whatever is inside this building, they know we're here”


	5. Chapter 5

Neither of them moved for what seemed like a long time. Fiona considered running, but the still air of the night convinced her otherwise.

“Someone is coming” Rhys finally said.

The spell was broken and both of them quickly hid behind trees. Fiona heard two pairs of feet walking towards them, breaking leaves and branches, not worrying a bit on whether or not they were being noticed. She leaned on the trunk to try to see who – or what – was coming, she saw a flashlight, searching through the trees and turned back around.

She turned to Rhys, he was sitting with his back to a tree. Fiona almost looked away but then she noticed he had his eyes shut close and a hand on his mouth. He seemed to be in pain.

“Rhys” she whispered “Are you okay?”

“Come out, we know you're here” taunted a voice. It was the man who punched her back in the clearing where they had parked the truck.

Fiona kept staring at Rhys as he took several deep breaths. Something was definitely wrong with him, but as long as he didn't attract any attention, they could deal with this later.

“Be quiet, you'll bother our friend” this was the woman with the red cloth on her head. The one that had captured them “They'll come out, have some patience”

Fiona couldn't help but frown. She had seen this man attack the town where the red bandana women lived, they were shooting each other, and now… Against her best judgment she peeked at them.

They were walking side by side, the small woman and the huge man. But in truth they both seemed small next to the figure walking behind them. Fiona felt her heart beating faster, it was an Eridian. The white, ghost-like form with a black circle for a face, it floated a few inches from the ground. Not a costume this time. A Ghost.

The flashlight was pointed at her general direction and she hid back.

“Tell it to call some help, I bet they can do it in half the time we can” he complained “We know damn well they have some nice weapons. These idiots would show up in no time if they pointed their toys at them” he snickered.

“Don't be disrespectful, boy” the woman censored. They were walking right in front of the tree she was hiding now, a couple more minutes and they would be gone. Fiona would run the hell out of there then, even if she had to drag Rhys with her. The night was dark, it would help them.

“It can't listen to me, I'll talk shit as much as I want” the man said, wavering the flashlight around “Why did they even make us bring this people here? Just a couple of idiots, fell for our trap like rats. Believed that bullshit chest story like some kids”

A pause, like they stopped to see something. Fiona held her breath.

“We believe what we choose to believe” the woman said finaly, and their loud steps continued to fill the forest's air.

Fiona glanced at Rhys, he looked better, listening to the other two leaving. This was their chance. She waved to get his attention and signed for them to go. He gave her a thumbs up.

Fiona crouched and stepped away from the tree, looking behind herself to see if the movement had been noticed. But the two were still talking, walking away unaware of them. That's it, it worked.

Fiona was about to let out a relieved breath when something started beeping. It seemed loud in the silence of the forest and it was coming from Rhys. Fiona waved her arms angrily at him. A woman was calmly announcing something about an error and a bunch of numbers, a doctor…

His echo eye was blinking red as he frantically went through menus on his arm.

Fiona hurried closer to the tree as she heard the two stepping towards them, the alien floating on their tail.

“There you are” the man's voice was way too close for comfort, Fiona didn't dare to move from behind the trunk.

The beeping stopped and Rhys fell on his butt, backing away. The man entered Fiona's field of vision and she saw the awful grin he was directing at Rhys. The woman stood a little behind with the alien.

“Do your justice” she said to the Eridian.

Rhys immediately froze in place. He tumbled to the ground like a bag of meat, eyes wide open staring at the sky.

Fiona got up, brain desperately trying to figure a way out of this. She could run, they didn't seem to have noticed her, she would have a headstart. Fiona shook her head, knowing she couldn't do that. Not anymore. 

Maybe it was the adrenaline, or the way Rhys laid helplessly on the ground. But it was then that she realized going back to Pandora alone would be just as bad as never returning at all.

_Here goes nothing._

Fiona let out what was hopefully a scary scream as she charged towards the alien. She passed right besides the man. He did nothing, too surprised to react. She saw something else in the woman's eyes. Was it fear?

Fiona would never know, before she could turn her head to the motionless white figure, her limbs stopped obeying her. She fell on her face, not too far from where the creature almost touched the ground. Some dirt got on her mouth and she was unable to do anything about it.

What a fun way to die, the other ghosts would never believe her.

She used her last effort to turn her head to the side. The dog was there, innocently walking to her, tongue hanging out of her open mouth.

Fiona was unconscious before the animal reached her.

\---

The air smelled of food. And not any food, meat. She took a deep breath, it was well cooked and delicious, Fiona could recognize a good steak when she smelled one. Her mouth was watering already. Where was this smell coming from and how could she get a piece of it?

Fiona opened her eyes to a ceiling painted blue. She sat up rubbing her eyes, noticing the soft bed she was lying in. She remembered what had happened at the woods, and was seriously confused as to how it had led to food and a soft bed. Had she been... rescued?

She looked around the small room. It had no visible doors, only a narrow window on the wall in front of the bed. It was entirely painted in a soft tone of blue, and so was the mattress and the blanket she was wrapped in. She looked down at herself, blue clothes.

There was some stuff on the ground but she didn't look at them twice, the gigantic piece of meat on the ground had her full attention. Beautiful and succulent, waiting for her.

She wanted to dive in it, bury her entire face on the delicious meal and never let go. But she didn't do that. Fiona didn't survive almost thirty years on Pandora doing this kind of stupid shit and she wasn't about to start now.

She untangled herself from the blanket and got up cautiously. The ground was soft to her bare feet, like cotton. Everything on that place seemed to be design o be soothing. Or they drugged her, that could be it too.

“Hello?” she called tentatively.

A screen on top of the window lit up and Fiona backed away in surprise. It started playing a way too loud song, making her cover her ears with her hands. A cheerful woman - featuring lots of static- sang in a language she had never heard before.

As she cowering on herself, trying to figure out where the unbearable sound was coming from, the screen showed a man smiling, saying something. Then a woman smiling, also saying something. The audio was cutting, Fiona couldn't make out most of what they were saying. 

_...men's best friend..._

The woman was holding a plastic sack with a picture of a dog in it. A golden dog with longer fur than the other dog. She seemed to be talking about it.

_...I feed my dog with Che..._

That's when Fiona realized she was watching a commercial.

“What? Are you being sponsored by dogs?” she mocked, voice loud over the song.

There was a shot of the dog running and the screen turned blue. Fortunately, the song stopped, leaving an unpleasant ring on Fiona's ears.

“What the hell is this supposed to mean?” Fiona asked to the walls.

Silence.

Fiona hurried to the window, it was nothing but a thin line that crossed the entire wall. She got on her tip toes to see through it. On the other side she saw a bunch of aliens. At least six of them, standing there, silent and still.

She stepped away from the window, heart racing.  _This is bad, this is really bad…_ She tried to remember anything useful from what she had heard from the eridians. 

They built vaults, and they left guardians to protect them. Everyone assumed they were long gone, but now Fiona knew they weren't. What if they were mad about they opening the vault? She had never heard about this step of opening vaults, the one were the owners kidnapped them to get some satisfactions.

She got back to the window.

“What did you do to my friend?” she asked, pounding a fist on the window. That's when she saw the metal bracelet they had stuck on her wrist. Fiona lost it.

She brought her other hand to it, trying to get rid of the thing. Fiona knew it was useless. The bracelet was tight and she knew it wouldn't be removable unless they wanted it to. As long as she was there, she wouldn't be able to do anything unless they wanted her to. 

She scratched at it and screamed profanities at the aliens anyway. 

_It can't listen to me, I'll talk shit as much as I want._ That man had said.

Fiona grabbed something from the ground and threw it at the window. Only when it hit the target did she notice it had been a pistol. Not hers, but a pistol all the same. 

Her eyes turned to the ground, it had a wide variety of objects: dolls, pots, lamps, and in between them a bunch of weapons.

She picked another pistol and shot at the window. At the second shot it cracked, at the third it broke.

“Ha! Can you hear _that_ , you asshole… alien… pieces of crap?” she screamed, a wild triumph running through her veins. Sadly, it didn't last long. 

Her vision started to blur and she fell to her knees. They were putting her down like a rabid skag. The bracelet must be filled with drugs.

As her head landed on the soft carpet she saw that glass had fallen on the meat. What a shame, it really had been a good steak.

\---

When Fiona opened her eyes again she was back in the bed and the window had turned into a mirror. There was no food this time, and they still hadn't killed her. In fact, they didn't harm her at all, she wasn't even in constraints. Why?

She thought about that dog commercial. Were they trying to say she was their dog? Were they planning on domesticating people? It would be easier if they just started shooting at her.

Fiona got up and went through the things on the ground. Lots of cushions, some books, boxes and other things she had never seen before. They had gotten rid of all the guns. 

She shouldn't have shot at them like that, she should have waited until it would actually make a difference. Oh, well, nothing to do about that now.

A door she hadn't noticed before led to a bathroom complete with a shower. And that was it, her entire cage.

Fiona wanted to scream. That fucking nutjob had tricked them into believing her, they had done exactly what she had wanted them to. Even the dog, it must have been part of her plan. The drugged jam, to make it easier to get them in case they started straying away from the path… How were they so stupid? Of course escaping that cell was so easy, it was exactly what they wanted them to do.

There was never a magic chest that would take them away from the aliens, they had been walking straight to them the entire time.

“What do you want?” she asked the mirror, trying to stop the fear from showing on her voice.

Fiona stood in the middle of the room waiting for an answer, but it never came.

\---

Fiona eventually gave up and went to look at the stuff around her more closely. If the aliens weren't pointing lasers at her and there was nothing she could do anyway, she could just might as well get some rest. They seemed to be planning on keeping her for a while, she would have plenty of opportunities of escaping.

She found a magazine, they weren't all that common on Pandora but that wasn't what caught her attention. This one was dated from 2034, May issue. She couldn't possibly imagine why the aliens had an almost thousand year old magazine, but it kept her busy.

She was reading a mildly curious article about “how to keep your children from suffering cyber bullying” when something moved in front of her. Fiona put the magazine down, watching as a small door in the wall was opened and a plate was pushed through it. This time it contained a generous piece of fish.

Fiona didn't get up from where she was sitting on the ground. The fish smelled like heaven to her hungry senses, but she kept her ass sat on the cushion.

The screen turned on again, this time without the music. The video had no audio at all. It showed a dog again, a different one, sitting still and looking up at a woman wearing black.

“You assholes really do like dogs, now don't you?” she mocked, adjusting herself on the cushion.

The woman said something to the dog, an order, and the dog gave her its paw. The woman patted its head and gave it something to eat.

Fiona eyed the fish suspiciously.

“So… if I want to eat... I have to obey?” she got up, looking around as if an order was about to present itself. She didn't like this, not at all. What kind of horrid things could these aliens want? If they tried any brainwashing bullshit on her… She would starve to death before she let that happen.

The image changed to a big “A” with a blue background.

“Uhh… okay… what's that supposed to mean?” she murmured to herself.

Fiona glanced at the fish again. Maybe she was wrong, maybe these two things were completely unrelated. She walked to the plate, knelt in front of it and reached for the food.

She wasn't that surprised when her arm met something solid in the middle of the way. Some sort of invisible… annoying… alien glass.  _Great._

Fiona got up, eyes glancing at the screen and then at the fish in sheer frustration.

“I don't know what you want!” she looked at the mirror, where she knew those scary jerks were still watching her. She huffed a breath “You know what? Fuck you and your lame ass fish, I can go _months_ without eating!”

\---

Fiona was wrong.

She got up in the middle of the night -the lights were turned off, so she supposed it was night. She was so hungry, and her stomach ached so bad it wouldn't let her sleep.

She had finished the magazine and spent most of her waking hours sending angry glares at the fish and the screen. Fiona was very much capable of murdering for it by the time it all went dark and she figured they wanted her to sleep. At least there was a sink with running water in the bathroom so she wasn't gonna die so soon.

Fiona stood in the middle of the dark room. She couldn't help but wonder if Rhys had figured it out by now. They must be doing the same thing to him, right?

“Hey, alien assholes!” Fiona waved her hands above her head, remembering what the man on the forest had said about them being deaf “I want another shot”

To her surprise, it actually worked. The lights turned on, accompanied by the annoying sound of static.

_...day we are learning the names of animals! Aren't you excited?_

A choir of children answered with a long, drawn-out yes.

The recording was incredibly old, judging by the poor sound quality.

_What is this animal?_

_Dooooog_

Fiona rolled her eyes, these guys had a real big dog obsession going on.

_Yes! It's a dog! Repeat after me: dog._

_Dooooog_

_That's great class, now let's spell it: d-o-g._

The kids did as told and Fiona frowned. Was the terrible alien mission just repeating things? She let out a laugh. At this point, she was prepared to do much worse. When the A flashed back on the screen she repeated it just like the children had. She was rewarded with the apparition of a new screen: the letter B.

Fiona had covered the entire alphabet by the time they finally let her eat the fish. The thing was unseasoned and poorly cooked, but she ate it eagerly. Her starving body couldn't care less about how the taste, it was the best meal of her life.

Later that day some fruits showed up and she went through the alphabet again. The following day they exchanged juice and a bunch of carrots for the name of a bunch of random objects. She wasn't too happy with the deal so she didn't put too much effort into the task, they didn't seem to notice. To her defense, she didn't know what half of those things were to begin with.

This went on for days, maybe weeks. She was completely loosing her notion of time and the days stretched on forever. The repeating got old very fast, Fiona just took to bullshitting the thing entirely. The images were getting harder to figure but she couldn't care less, there was a twisted pleasure in ruining whatever the hell it was they were trying to do.

Fiona kept herself busy with extreme, acute boredom. The magazine was over fast and she had nothing better to do than stare at the ceiling and think. It was unbearable, and her mind was quickly becoming an unbearable place to be as well.

She missed Sasha, the sun, the wind. Fiona never thought she would miss the presence of other people, but she did. She missed being able to walk for a straight line without meeting a wall. But what she missed the most was not having the ghost feeling of eyes on her back the whole time.

On her spare time, which was lots of time, Fiona tried to find a way out. She would touch the walls in the lookout for a hidden door, yank parts of the carpet out for trapdoors... Most times they would notice what she was doing and drug her unconscious in minutes, but sometimes she did it for what seemed like hours with no consequences. She started to notice a pattern, it happened mostly in the time right after the repeating thing. They weren't looking at her at all times.

It had probably been a little over a week since she last saw the sky when she caught herself crying. Lying on the bed surrounded by complete darkness, she considered the possibility of never getting out of there, of being their helpless, bored pet forever.

She let the tears roll over her cheeks as she made herself a promise. If she didn't find a way out in a month, she would stop all of this for good. Fiona decided she would rather kill herself than let this torture stretch on endlessly.

\---

The screen showed two people talking, two men, wearing black suits. There was a very tall building behind them and Fiona took her sweet time looking at it. She was laying on the bed with her feet prompted on the wall and a rag doll on her hands, she liked to squeeze it for whatever reason.

“Lick my ass” Fiona pronounced it clearly and well spaced, she didn't want anyone to mistake her words.

The screen turned blue again and she got up, trowing the doll to the ground and getting her plate of weirdly big and yellow mushrooms. She wasn't sure if they were actually edible, but she dropped it on the bed before they were taken back anyway.

Fiona went to the bathroom where she was marking the days on the wall with a fork. She knelt next to the marks, hidden behind the bathroom sink. Hopefully still hidden from the prying eyes of alien dickheads.

“Day three… only 27 more to go” she murmured to herself as she risked a third line on the wall. Fiona wasn't sure if she would really stick to the escape deadline plan, but she liked the idea of keeping record of time either way.

She got up and supported her hands on the sink, head down as she pictured the room besides her in her head. Where could be the weak spot? There had to be a way in and out somewhere, they couldn't have teletransported her in there. Fiona's eyes widened. She hadn't considered that before. Could they? She shook her head. 

The objects on the room had changed twice already. One time to remove the guns, second time to add more random ass shit. No one would do all this teletransportation.

Fiona watched her fingers tap the sink rapidly, traced the tiles in the floor with her eyes… This wasn't going nowhere, she wasn't going nowhere. The tiles were white and were hastily put there, Fiona noticed this one tile at the corner of the room, it was visibly crooked.

She had searched every corner of her small cell, there was no where else- Wait. The tile.

Fiona tried to suppress the nervous energy inside her as she went to the door and closed it. A crooked tile was the first obvious imperfection she found in this place's structure. The food was awful and they didn't seem to know much about humans but they did know how to build a solid place.

She hurried to the corner of the room and crouched before the tile, she had never been a religious person but as she reached for it, every god she had ever heard of was hearing from her. Fire god, cannibal skag god, god of the sacred shotgun Fiona didn't give a shit.

She pulled the tile and it came with her hands. Fiona's eyes widened and her lips formed a grin as she put it away. The tile was lighter than it looked, like it was made to be moved around.

There was a tunnel under the hole left by the tile and Fiona stared down at it in awe. She couldn't believe her eyes, and she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of the goddamn bathroom before. But it didn't matter because there was a way out right in front of her.

It was made of metal, dimly illuminated by round, equally spaced holes in the ground. It wasn't exactly narrow, but the ceiling seemed was low enough that she wouldn't be able to stand.

Fiona carefully lowered herself into it, trying to make as little noise as possible even though she knew they wouldn't hear it.

Her heart was thumping on her chest, for once it was for excitement and not fear. 

She got on all fours and moved forward in the tunnel. She had to find Rhys, he had a map of the place. Not that she would leave him behind if he hadn't, but that was some welcomed extra motivation. She also had to be back or gone by the time the eridians noticed she wasn't in the room anymore. This tunnel could be her only chance out of there, the only mistake they would make. She couldn't risk loosing it.

Fiona looked through one of the holes in the ground and saw a well lit room. There were three eridians down there, looking at a screen. They didn't move, but it kept changing like they were doing something. The moves were coordinated, flowing like a dance. The aliens worked like a perfect team and it scared the crap out of Fiona.

She kept moving forward, fast and with increasing recklessness, desperate to go as far as she could. It wasn't long before she got to a fork. One way to the left, one to the right.  _Right for the right way it is._

The tunnel turned into a ramp, she kept moving until the ground was level again and Fiona saw herself in a new tunnel. It was straight and stretched on to both sides. She noticed various other ways leading to it as she turned right again. That seemed like a good sign, she must have found a central tunnel.

Fiona spied through a hole. There was an empty room below and it sent a chill down her spine. Despite the white walls and floor Fiona knew it was exactly like the room she was prisoner in, only unoccupied. How many of those did they have?

She started to hear a low clicking noise, like metal going against metal approaching quickly. Fiona looked back and saw a small, square robot with long arms and wheels for feet carrying a box in its head. It reached her and they both froze in place before the robot moved to the side and continued its way.

Fiona stared as it moved away from her. 

“What the hell?” she mouthed, relieved the thing didn't start blasting off alarms or anything.

Fiona decided to follow it. She crawled faster than ever and managed to reach the robot. She was very tempted to take the box and look what was in it but she didn't. The robot kept going and she felt the urge to go back, these tunnels where much bigger than she thought, she had to come back another time.

The robot took a sharp turn into one of the adjacent tunnels and Fiona stopped following. That was it for today, she had already gone too far.

She lowered herself to take one last look at whatever was below her before leaving. 

The room was full of movement. Not from eridians, but robots. Five of them. They were all basically long arms with wheels, and reminded Fiona of spiders.

There was a big fuss over something in the middle of the room, they were all focused on a bed and Fiona noticed a bunch of medical equipments, human equipments. It looked like they were making a surgery in a person's head. The patient's eyes were closed and he was wearing blue clothes exactly like hers. Except that person was wearing cuffs and not a charming bracelet like hers. But that wasn't the worst part.

One arm was connected to vials and machinery, the other one was made of metal. That person was Rhys.

Fiona moved away from the hole with a rapid intake of breath. Part of her wanted to storm in there now, haul Rhys over her shoulder and get the hell out of that place, but she knew that wasn't going to happen. They were messing with something on his head but at least he was alive, right? He would be fine.

She lowered herself again just in time to see the square robot arrive with the box. It was taken from the robot and it went away and out of her field of vision. Fiona couldn't see what they were doing to Rhys, but he didn't seem to be feeling anything. She wondered if he was being watched too, if they would notice if she went down there. Not then, but eventually.

One of the robots opened the box and pulled out metal wires out of there, Fiona got away from the hole before they did anything with them.

Going back to her room was a non issue. She put the fake tile back in its place, went back to the bed and chewed her mushrooms as if nothing had happened.

Fiona didn't sleep much that night. Her mind kept going back to those old ladies with red cloth over their heads, they said they could talk to aliens, she saw one of them actually do so. That girl on the car had dismissed the possibility they would do that to them, but of all the things they could be doing to Rhys, Fiona hoped that was it.

And there was also that moment, right before they were caught, Rhys had been acting weird, like he was in pain, and that beeping started right after. Whatever it was he was hiding from her, it was, as she had predicted, becoming a problem for her too.

When she did manage to sleep she dreamed she was cuffed to her bed with her head wide open. eridians were taking notes besides her as metal fingers poked her brain.

  



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was supposed to be Rhys' chapter but... it isn't. My planning betrayed me (ops) but don't worry, I'll make up for it in the future haha hope you enjoy all the extra Fiona!

She went back to look at Rhys the next day. He was alone this time, but still unconscious. His head was covered in a bandage and he was still connected to medical equipment. Fiona saw the steady rise and fall of his chest, he was still alive.

The day after that she took the turn to the left, which was an utterly useless journey, no way out there. She only got to watch the aliens doing their freaky things, like standing still for an absurd amount of time and seeming extremely in tune with each other. When one of them moved all of them moved, Fiona quickly realized they were a very united civilization. She was sure she could use that to her advantage.

Fiona checked on Rhys two more times. He was always sleeping and Fiona started to worry he would never wake up because of whatever the eridians had done to him. But he didn't look like he was starving to death, or dying by any other cause. So at least there was that.

On the third day the bandage on his head was gone and he seemed fine, tousled hair and bags under his eyes, but fine. 

On the day after that there was an eridian in his room. It was alone and had a small black device attached to its side. As she watched the thing materialized a hologram of another Eridian, looking as real as the first one. They stood still, facing each other as they did for a long time before the hologram was gone and the device fell off the alien, meeting the ground with a thud.

The eridian left and Fiona was tempted to go down there and get the device, but she didn't. If there was something she was learning from all this, it was patience.

It had been a week since she discovered the tunnels when she first got down to one of the rooms below. She had taken the turn to the left and found a room with no aliens, but full of their stuff. It was exactly like all the other rooms; the tunnel ended in a hole on the ground in a smaller back room. But this one wasn't a human cage, it looked like some kind of deposit.

Fiona didn't dare open the door, but she took the one golden object sitting in a table in the backroom before leaving. She hid it in the entrance to the tunnels in her room, stuffed inside a cushion for safekeeping. She had only seen robots go through there, and they didn't seem like the type to snitch. If the eridians had communication devices, she was ready to steal all of their stuff to get her hands on one of them.

Fiona took a bag with her from that day on, just one more of the many human items available to her. The lack of ways out of that place where starting to bother her, she was going further and further away everyday but the tunnels seemed endless. She started to suspect the only way out was going to be through the front door, where ever it was.

On the tenth day Rhys was awake.

He was still cuffed to the bed, staring at the ceiling with his brows furred. Fiona let out a breath of relief, so he wasn't in a comma after all. He was looking for something, and Fiona realized he was looking for what caused the noise. Because he heard her coming. Fiona had been living among aliens for so long she forgot that most humans did that.

She looked at the tunnel besides her, the one the robot had used to go down there. Should she…? No, that looked like an absurdly unnecessary risk. Instead, she went back to look down at Rhys.

“Rhys” she called, voice low even though it was completely unnecessary.

His eyes widened and he turned his head to the sides, trying to find the source of the sound as his wrists struggling weakly against the restraints. His movements were slow, like he was still under the effect of something.

“Hey, hey cam down” she said “Up here, it's me, Fiona.”

“Fiona?” he slurred, eyes still trying to find her.

“Yeah, asshat.” Fiona let out a small laugh “Are they watching you? The eridians?”

“I can't see you, where… where are you?” he said slowly.

“I'm above the ceiling so they won't see me. Are they watching you?” she insisted.

“No... I don't know”

Fiona sighed. Of course he wouldn't know, he was out most of the time. She took a hand to adjust her hat before she remembered it wasn't there, she ran it through her hair instead.

“Are you okay?” Rhys asked.

Fiona was caught off guard by the question. She must have been really starved for human interaction, because she answered with a smile.

“I'm fine” she said “Are you?”

“Bit tired” Rhys admitted, closing his eyes “I miss… Vaughn, and Sasha. I'm glad you're here though”

“I'm gonna get us out of here, I promise” Fiona said, putting so much more confidence in those empty words than she actually felt.

“'K” and he was out again.

\---

Fiona grew bolder with time, with trip after trip being successful she went down to the rooms more often, stayed out longer. In three days, her bag was full of alien objects. She would go to the bathroom to stare at them often, trying to figure out what they were for, but none of them looked like the one she saw the alien use and she didn't dare try to turn one of them on.

There was one room that made her specially happy. It was full of boxes with labels she didn't understand, all full with human objects. Clothes, toys, weapons. She didn't want to think too long on how the aliens got that stuff, or what happened to the previous owners. All in all it was very creepy, she was only happy because she found her stuff. Even the pistol those people had taken. Fiona took it with her and left the rest behind.

She eventually mustered the courage to take a peek at the hallway outside one of the rooms. The doors were always open, the eridians didn't seem to hide anything from each other, no one was denied access anywhere.

Again, she saw an open door by the end of the hallway. It seemed so easy, she could just bolt and don't look back. The bag dangling from her shoulder, and especially her pistol, it could help her go back home.

But she didn't do that. Instead, she went to see Rhys. He was awake again, even if he looked as disorientated as he had the first time. Maybe a little less drugged. He was already looking at her general direction, face unreadable.

“Fiona?” he called.

“Hey jerkface how are you doing?” Fiona greeted.

“I'm...” Rhys' gaze turned to a wall and he didn't say anything for a long time. Fiona thought that he might have passed out, but then he turned back to her and continued “the eridians haven't been here in a while”

“Good, that's good”

Rhys shook his head.

“They are saying things- something is changing… they don't know how to… deal with it”

“Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean- oh.” Fiona felt a chill run down her spine. So they were talking to him. “They did the… thing. You can hear them now?”

Rhys nodded.

“Something is happening, I- I think you should hurry up with the escape plan” he said “I think it's gonna be bad.”

They talked for a few more minutes before Fiona left. She didn't think Rhys knew what he was talking about, he just sounded vague and traumatized. The aliens had ripped his head open and were now dumping their bullshit on him, so she didn't blame him.

Fiona went back to the tunnels, and believing Rhys or not, she had a plan unfolding in her head. A big part of it was the new recovery of her pistol, it boosted her confidence like nothing else. And there was also the fact that nothing new ever happened in this place, tomorrow would be as good a day to get the hell out of there as any. Especially if Rhys' words had any connection to reality.

Fiona would repeat that bullshit for the aliens, and then she would be gone. If the front door was the only way out, than that's where she was headed.

She gathered all that she was going to take with her – the objects, some leftover food, her pistol – and made it fit inside the bag. F iona put it in the tunnel and waited for the screen to light up, sitting on the bed with her feet tapping the ground anxiously. 

She wasn't bored that day, and she didn't seriously consider giving up or trying later, even though the idea did show up every now and then. She had a plan, and it was going to work.

Fiona waited and waited but the screen didn't light up. She knew it was taking too long, but she blamed it on herself. That's what waiting does to time, it stretches it. Except for her fidgeting, nothing in the room moved, and then the lights were off.

Fiona froze. The eridians had never skipped a day before, they were flawless with the timing. Or at least it always seemed like it. But they were telling her to sleep with no repeating section, and she knew something had changed. She got up.

They had figured it all out, they knew she was going to escape and were doing something about it. Fiona thought about cuffs and cells as she headed towards the bathroom. Or they had finished whatever they were doing with her and the words, maybe they had found out she wasn't doing it right. Shit, maybe Rhys was right.

Either way, she was useless to them now. Fiona closed the bathroom's door, knowing that disposable things always ended up dead sooner or later.

If anything, this only made her need for escaping more urgent. Her plan could go to hell, she was leaving now.

Fiona opened the way to the tunnel and jumped in, picking up the bag and passing it over her shoulder. She put the tile back in place even though it seemed useless.

The bag rattled loudly as she crawled, but not as loudly as the drumming of her heart on her ears.

As she made her way to Rhys, she stopped every now and then to look at the rooms below. They were all empty and it sent warning signs in her head. The rooms were never empty, not all of them. Something was definitely wrong, maybe it had nothing to do with her. Maybe they were already looking.

She eyed the silver bracelet nervously. It had never told them about her escapes before, or at least she thought so. Fiona begged it not to start now.

She was relieved to find Rhys awake, that would make everything a lot easier.

“I'm going down there, do you think they're watching?” Fiona said, spying through the hole, trying to spot anything in the room.

“Fiona? How do you keep getting up there?”

“It doesn't matter. Are the eridians watching you?”

“No, there's no one here” he answered, voice flat and certain.

Fiona turned to the ramp behind her.

“How do you know that?” she asked as she made the turn to the room. It was exactly like going back to her own room, which was always incredibly creepy.

“I just do” he said. “They're at a… square?”

Fiona remembered he could talk to them now, that probably had something to do with his certainty. The empty rooms, the lack of repeating section that day, she had a bad feeling about this. She got the tile out of the way and climbed into the backroom.

“All of them?” Fiona asked, putting the tile back in place.

“Uh-hum” he said “Something is happening. Why are you here?”

Fiona got up and entered the main room. 

“I'm getting us out of here” _hopefully._

The door to the corridor was open, waiting for them to get out. She turned to Rhys, who looked like he might fall back to sleep anytime.

“What's happening?” she walked to the side of the bed, looking at all the tubes connected in his flesh arm and the one cable connected to the metal limb, the cuffs.

Rhys lazily turned his head to her.

“Yeah, it's bad.” he said. “Like, real bad”

Fiona opened the bag, searching for one of the heaviest objects to break the cuffs, they looked like regular, metal cuffs, not very hard to break.

“You don't seem… bothered by it” she said.

“I'm very high right now, I can't feel a thing”

Fiona found it. A black box with purple edges that was way heavier than it looked.

“Stay still” she said, taking the thing out of the bag “I'm gonna break the cuffs”

Rhys stared her straight in the eye and lifted his metal arm, which prompted a clank of metal from the cuffs as the chain broke. Fiona tilted her head back.

“Why didn't you do that before?” her voice was pure contained anger, but Rhys didn't seem to care.

He shrugged and proceeded to yank the chains of the other cuff.

“There's something I should tell you…” he said, wincing as he took off the tubes connected to his arm “but I can't remember- ow. That was the anesthetic, I know it”

Fiona helped him to a sitting position, watching as he went pale, sawing even as his feet touched the ground. He looked like shit, but Fiona told herself they had time to deal with it.

“Do you still have those maps you downloaded right when we got here?” she asked, both hands on his shoulders, partly to keep him from falling, but also to make sure he was paying attention.

“Yeah” he brought the metal hand forward, already opening a menu and Fiona stepped aside. His arm was displaying layers and layers of an impossibly big building. “I think I- there it is.”

“What's the easier way out?”

He blinked at the map, trying to focus.

“There's only one door to the outside floor, right here” a red dot appeared on the map.

“That's close, great! All we got to do is cross this big square room and- Oh, that's where the aliens are, isn't it?”

Rhys nodded slightly. The map showed no indications of ways up or down, no stairs or even those hell pipes. This way was risky, but it seemed better than wander around an alien building looking for a better one.

“I don't think they'll care if they see us” he looked down at his feet, frowning slightly as if trying to remember something “They have a leader now, they didn't have one before. That's a rough change” he added.

“Okay, you're not making any sense” Fiona said, helping him up. 

Rhys stood still where she left him, eyes on her even though she suspected he was seeing right through her. He looked better than before. A little. Or at least Fiona tried to convince herself he was.

“Let's go.” she hesitated before turning to the door “Just… say something if you're about to break your face on the ground”

They crossed the well lit corridor with no problems, there was not a single alien around and Fiona couldn't spot any cameras. The corridor had several identical doors leading to identical rooms. Fiona knew them, had been held prisoner in one of them, watched them from above several times. She couldn't wait until she was far, far away from them.

Rhys was walking in front of her, looking at the map on his palm. She couldn't help but notice the red marks left by puncture wounds on his neck and the spot on his head where some hair was missing. That must be how they got inside his brain, she realized.

“How long have we been here?” he asked.

“About a month, give or take a few days” Fiona said quietly “I haven't been awake the whole time either, I think, so maybe more”

“Have they...” Rhys pointed vaguely to his head “done this to you?”

“No.” Fiona wanted to reassure him that whatever the Eridians had done they could find a way to undo, she wanted to say something that would make this entire situation feel less awful. But nothing occurred to her, so she kept quiet.

They reached the end of the corridor and met a big hall, also empty. They crossed it fast, the tall walls and the open room making Fiona want to shrink into herself as much as she could. She kept her eyes fixed on the door where they were headed, the one that contained all the Eridians.

Fiona could see their backs, they were all staring at the same thing, silent as ever. Rhys stopped on his tracks.

“C'mon don't tell me the big bad aliens are scaring you.” she mocked, more to lighten the mood than anything else. She, for one, was scared shitless by the eridians. But they had to keep going, they saw the map, there was no other way. “Rhys?”

She walked to his side, and the sheer fear in his face caught her by surprise. If he had been pale before, he looked a little green now. Eyes wide, but not looking at the eridians at all.

Fiona's gaze wavered between the room in front of them and Rhys' face.

“What's happening?” her tone was serious now.

“I… I...” he stuttered, seeming distracted by something else.

“Are they talking to you?” she insisted “What are they saying?”

Rhys shook his head violently.

“How… The eye, oh god, the eye.”

“Rhys, tell me what's happening”

He took a step back and Fiona reached out a hand, thinking he might be about to fall but he shied away from her, from the room he couldn't stop looking at.

“Their new leader… i-it's Jack.”

Fiona's heart dropped to her stomach.

“That's impossible” she said, unconsciously distancing herself from the room too.

“I… the eye, they must have- oh god, this can't be happening. He escaped the eye”

“Okay, calm down. How do you know that?”

“I can hear him… he's talking to them. He's-” 

“Rhys, Jack is dead! The AI died when you… you got your eyeball out.” Fiona said, trying to reassure the both of them. 

But she saw the look on Rhys' face, like an embarrassed excuse, and she brought both her hands to her face to try to contain her frustration.

“It wasn't broken, it was just not connected to anything” he explained hurriedly “so technically-”

“Ugh, this can't be happening” Fiona moaned.

“Technically if he was connect to anything-”

“And you kept carrying it around? What's wrong with you?”

“Oh, I'm sorry if I didn't predict aliens were gonna go through my stuff! My bad!”

“So Jack is in that room right now?”

“I don't know. He- he could be everywhere by now. If he got into this place's systems-”

“Does he know about us?”

“I don't know.” he said “He's trying to convince the eridians to… to work with him. Maybe he doesn't know how he got back yet, but if we go there...”

She looked at his face and she knew they could never cross that room now, not if Jack was there. If he had been wanting Rhys' head on a stick for the Helios crash, she could only imagine what he would do to them now. There had to be another way.

Fiona turned away, looking for something they might have missed, for anything that might help. Her eyes went straight for the tall windows that decorated the walls. They were easy to miss, showing the sky that was as black as the walls, big and hopefully breakable. Fiona took the pistol from her bag. Eridian's last window broke with three shots, she had four now so this better work.

She looked back at Rhys.

“Change of… Oh shit” 

From over his shoulder she saw big, white and purple masked things coming towards them. Guardians, identical to the ones she and Sasha found in the Traveler. And they had their swords in hands. She didn't know how many there were, but they entered the room fast and with reason and they didn't stop coming.

Fiona grabbed Rhys by the arm as he turned to look at the guardians.

“The windows. Now.” she said.

Against all her instincts she turned her back to the small incoming army. Fiona ran to the window, trying to aim the gun at the closest one but she quickly realized she would miss if she fired.

“You want to jump?” Rhys asked from somewhere behind her. So he was following, great.

“Jump?” she made the mistake to look back. The guardians had woken into movement, there were almost ten of them, and they were fast. She turned back to the window and fired without thinking, she missed.

“We're on the third floor!” Rhys said.

“Why didn't you say that before?” Fiona asked as she hurriedly reloaded the pistol.

Fiona slowed down her pace as she almost hit the windows. The guardians moved loudly, like the sounds of spiderants and armour and she had to use every ounce of her self control not to look back.

She fired at the window again, reloaded. One more time, reloaded. The two bullets hit pretty close, but the glass had only scratched. The last one had to break it or else…

“Fiona!”

She turned around in time to see a huge sword flying towards her head. She threw herself to the side without thinking, and got up trying to find Rhys, but all she could see were guardians. She backed away, looking at their masked faces, trying to find a way out. But her back hit the wall and she knew there was none.

She had been stupid to think she could outsmart aliens, of course they would have defenses. The eridians built vaults and tamed monsters to attack at their will, of course they wouldn't let their prisoners escape that easy.

Fiona was about to close her eyes when a loud noise startled her. It came from the other end of the room, loud and obnoxious. Like a… trumpet? Wait, she knew that song.

So you come a long way

It caught the attention of the guardians and Fiona watched in disbelief as they slowly widened the circle around her, trying to find the source of the sound. Rhys.

But you'll never have me, never have

“Rhys!” she whispered-screamed, eyeing the sword that stood stuck on the window, deep cracks around it.

...a normal life, it's time to busy earnin'

Fiona looked at the aliens, but they weren't interested on her anymore. She went to the window and put her hands around the sword, trying to pull it out of the window. But the thing was half crossed to the other side, she would never get it out.

_You can't get enough_

That song had been on the radio everyday a few time ago, when this whole madness had began. It had to be Rhys' making. Unless it was Jack. No, it couldn't be Jack. Her eyes searched the crowd and she finally spotted another human being.

On the corner of the room, Rhys was crawling his way to her, almost bumping into the feet of the confused guardians. He saw her looking and gave her a thumbs up.

She let out a relieved breath and returned to the sword. She didn't want to waste the last bullet on her pistol, but if she could just get the sword out… The music stopped.

Fiona got her back to the window on instinct, and she saw as Rhys froze in place. The guardians stopped moving, as if waiting for commands.

“Hey kiddos, you leaving already?”

It was Jack, his disembodied voice coming from where ever the music had played from before. Up to this moment Fiona hadn't really grasped the reality in Rhys' words. Maybe a part of her hoped he was just paranoid from the drug, but now there was no denying it. He was back. Again.

“I know this place sucks a little… lot... but c'mon! You're not even gonna _talk_ to the host? I have some renovations in mind… maybe a hot tub, some proper torture chambers… You're just  gonna have to stick around, I insist” Jack's tone was cheerful and light, but it went dark as fast as a lamp when he spoke next “Especially you Rhysie, we have some things we have to talk about, you and me”

The room went silent for what seemed like a long time, and Fiona didn't dare to move. She exchanged a look with Rhys, who looked more terrified than ever, so close to a guardian he might touch it if he breathed too hard. She gripped her pistol tight, they were still getting out of there. They were.

“Where's your hat, hat lady? Almost didn't recognize you without it.” Jack said suddenly “Anyway, kill her. Get the other one to me. Now.”

Another sword flew toward her and she dodged it poorly, hissing as it grazed her arm. Rhys had been put against the wall, a guardian was holding him by the neck. His legs kicked the wall and the alien to no avail.

Fiona stepped forward with her pistol raised, ignoring the sting on her arm and the warm blood pouring from the wound. She heard the guardians around her getting closer and the swords that flew around her, but she didn't look at any of that. It felt like a dream, a miracle. She aimed her gun at the head of the creature holding Rhys and fired. She was calm, she knew that one was going to hit its target.

The creature stumbled backwards and Rhys fell to the ground. Fiona just kept walking. Rhys got back to her field of vision and he was back to his feet, pushing away the alien she shot.  Fiona frowned before  she underst oo d what he was doing.

It was hurt, not dead. But that was just enough. He wanted to push the alien through the window.

Fiona was by his side in a second, pushing the armour on the guardian's upper legs. It wasn't resisting, and it was one hell of a shield against the swords falling around them like arrows. It kind of seemed confused by the fact it had been hurt.

They were running but Fiona still wasn't sure the window would break on impact. They were a big but clumsy missile and the glass seemed strong, but if it worked they would have some protection from the impact. 

She was running and dragging the alien with her in a moment and in the next it was violently pulled away and she heard the loud sound of shattering glass.

Fiona would have fallen if a pair of hands hadn't grabbed her arm. She let out a pained groan as Rhys dug his fingers on her injury, the graceless asshole.

Fiona yanked her arm free, looking up in time to see the impaled alien fall back to the forest below with what was left of the crumbling window.

The room was silent again and she turned to find that other guardians had knelt, looking silently at where the first one fell. She realized one of them had missed the throw and killed one of their own with its sword.

The two humans backed away to the hole left by the window, stepping in the shards and watching the now still aliens. Fiona gazed through the window, the ground wasn't that far below. They would survive.

“Ugh, this is such a turn off” Jack sounded humored “They are not doing anything, are they? Frickin' aliens, you'd think they'd be a better staff. Reeeally hard to work it, lemme tell you.” he chuckled.

Fiona was facing the window and so was Rhys, both staring down and trying to muster up the courage to jump.

“Yeah, just… do your thing now, run away from here. I'll get you back when I get this place together, don't worry. But if you could just... stay right there for like thirty minutes…? Yeah, you won't, I know. You two _like_ to make everything hard for everyone.”

“He's stalling, there are more aliens coming.” Rhys said quietly.

“We have to jump.” Fiona said unhelpfully. She was making a real effort to ignore Jack, who was still talking.

“Yes.” Rhys agreed “On three?”

“On three.”


	7. Chapter 7

Rhys had never ran as fast in his life as he did that night. He and Fiona ran even through no one followed, avoiding the uneven terrain, twigs and trees until their breathing was loud in the silent forest.

He looked back eventually, trying to catch a glimpse at the place they had escaped, half expecting to see a big, black building with Jack watching through a window, arms crossed and a mean smile on his face. But all he saw were trees and the night sky, like the forest itself was trying to hide the place.

It started raining and the ground grew slippery, they had no choice but to slow down. They walked in silence, quickly getting soaked by the insistent drops of water. It was cold, and Rhys' new light t-shirt wasn't helping much.

He couldn't hear the eridians anymore, or Jack. Rhys didn't feel quite as terrified as he thought he would, after the initial shock, he just felt numb. All those nights waking up from this very nightmare had apparently prepared him for it after all. Jack was back and it was like a part of him always knew it would happen.

All those things hallucination-Jack had said… It had been easier to dismiss them before. He looked down at his metal fingers, flexing them slowly as if he could somehow catch a glimpse of Jack in them, but of course he couldn't. That was  _his_ arm. Rhys just wanted to run from all of this.

He searched the forest for somewhere safe to stop but his mind kept going back to what had happened before. The familiar feeling of Jack's voice inside his head, the eridians talking to him before. They wanted to know about the vault, he didn't remember what he told them, or if he said anything at all. 

Jack said he wanted him alive, and that scared Rhys more than anything else. More than what Jack could do now that he had something so much bigger than Hyperion at his disposal, more than if he had wanted his head. 

Because he remembered being with Jack. He had idolized the guy but he wasn't stupid, he knew all along who he was, so Rhys was wary. He wanted to be on his good side, of course, he wanted to take advantage of the situation like the idiot he was. It took a while for him to realize he wasn't in control of anything anymore, that Jack always found a way to get what he wanted. Even if he was nothing but a voice in his head.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when Fiona said something he didn't listen. Rhys stared at her until she repeated. He noticed for the first time there was a headache rising from the drugs that were wearing off.

“How did you do that? With the music?” she said “To distract them back there”

“Oh. I hacked the lock of a door, just had to make it emit sounds and then put the song there” he explained “The cybernetics are not just for the looks you know”

Fiona considered what he said, pushing a wet strand of hair away from her eyes.

“So your arm... it's also an mp3?” Fiona asked.

“Well, obviously.” Rhys said, not sure where the conversation was going “What's the use of a prosthetic limb if you still have to own a phone?”

Fiona rolled her eyes. Later on she asked if he was alright, Rhys said he was fine, just had a headache, nothing to worry about. 

\---

They eventually stumbled into a house. It was small and half the roof had fallen and destroyed the floor below, the windows seemed to have been gone for a long time. No signs of anyone still around.

At that point his headache had evolved into something much bigger than a small inconvenience, it was impossible to ignore. Each step seemed to make the pulsing pain in his brain worsen and the once low noise coming from Fiona's bag was driving him insane. He didn't give a shit if the place was safe or not, Rhys just wanted to stop.

Fiona eyed the place suspiciously, but she didn't protest and they walked in.

The inside was miraculously dry, their feet left dark marks on the dirty floor as they walked. Even the destroyed roof still provided protection from the weather outside. The room was barren of furniture, except for some cabinets, open doors showing there was nothing inside.

Rhys sat down with his back to a wall, flesh hand to his forehead as if it could somehow take the pain away.

“I can't see much outside, but I don't think there are other houses around” Fiona was looking through a window, rubbing her arms for warmth. She let the bag slid off her shoulder and Rhys couldn't help but flinch at the noise. 

Fiona walked to the other side of the room to look through the door. She squinted and leaned on the frame. Rhys could see she was tired, but she was clearly very happy to have escaped too, and that seemed to keep her moving. 

Rhys wondered what happened to her, they didn't lock her in a lab apparently. He eyed the bag on the floor with curiosity but didn't have the energy to ask anything. Rhys wondered if the headache would go away if he slept, but he wasn't that excited to discover his brain's show for tonight.

“Guess we're as safe as we're gonna get” Fiona finally said, going back to sit by her bag with a tired sigh “I have food, you hungry? Some water too but… well, I drank a lot of water back there without meaning to...” she opened the bag as she spoke, laying out its contents in front of her without much care.

As she reached inside the bag Rhys saw the red gash in her upper arm. Her skin was still red from where the rain had washed away the blood.

“You're bleeding” he noted, remembering all the swords that where thrown at her by those aliens.

“Oh really? I hadn't noticed. Thanks Rhys!” Fiona found what she had been looking for; a piece of cloth she wrapped around her wound as a bandage.

Rhys ignored her sarcasm, looking at the shiny objects on the floor. He could identify a battery and his echo eye told him another one was sending off some sort of signal. There was also a memory card with a coded lock, some chips full of data… It was all alien tech, things his pandoran made prosthetic had no right to know.

“Where, no- _why_ do you have all those things?” Rhys leaned forward, suddenly distracted from his self-pity moment by the small black, metal and purple things in front of him.

Fiona shrugged.

“Thought they could be useful” she said, looking at the hand working on the bandage “I got a phone. At least I think it's something like a phone… I saw an eridian using it, a hologram showed up… It's that one” she pointed her head towards a black cube.

Rhys picked the thing up, scanning it with his echo eye.

“It's transmitting… hm... something. Right now” he turned it on his hands, noticing the occasional purple streaks that stained the black surface. The thing was definitely not broken.

If it really got them to talk to their friends… Vaughn could trace the signal, find out where the hell they where and send a ship. It would all be over, they could leave this entire mess behind and sail to the other edge of the universe.

“Do you know how to make it work?” Fiona asked, tucking in the loose end of the fabric of her bandage.

“Not yet, but it can't be that hard” Rhys said. He took it closer to his face, trying to see if the purple streaks could mean something “You know me… always coming up with things”

He put the thing down, unable to get his head to concentrate hard enough to come up with anything. Fiona was squeezing the water out of her shirt, a puddle of water forming besides her as she rolled her eyes.

“What about the other stuff?” Rhys asked, pulling at his own shirt, the wet fabric insisted on sticking to his skin, annoying him much more than was reasonable. Everything was annoying him, actually, the way the wind hit the walls and made the house creak, all the water everywhere, the cold, and above all the insistent headache. It was part of Hyperion training, he guessed, to stay functioning no matter the circumstances.

“I have no idea, just picked them up.” Fiona leaned back on the wall. “The eridians weren't worried at all with thieves, everything was just… laying around.” 

Rhys hummed an answer, picking up a round object that was way heavier than it looked. He planned on looking at those things better later, when his head wasn't attempting to explode.

“I think they trust each other much more than humans do. And we already trust each other too much, I think. I would know it.” Fiona added suddenly.

Rhys looked up to see her staring at him with a weird expression, he took a while to recognize the mistrust written all over her face.

“What's that supposed to mean?” he put the ball back down, wondering how he hadn't noticed that change of temper before.

“Jack's back and you-”

“You think I have something to do with that?”

“I don't know, do you?”

He didn't say anything and so the small house was filled with the sound of raindrops hitting the roof. Lighting illuminated the sky and was quickly followed by loud thunder that made the house shake a little. Or it could be just him.

“What happened after the Helios crash, Rhys?” Fiona pressed.

There was no escaping this now and he knew it, but still Rhys tried to avoid having the conversation that would ultimately end up having her trust him even less. He clumsily got up, not really sure why, maybe to buy himself a few seconds. It prompted his vision to go black for a second.

“The eridians brought Jack back, not me.” he said, arms crossed as he willed the walls to stop spinning “They didn't even let me out of that bed, how-”

Fiona got to her feet as well, wet hair still dripping water to the floor as she leaned forward with a finger pointed to him.

“Why won't you answer the question?” she demanded.

“Give me one reason why I would want that… that genocidal jerk back and I'll answer your question, Fiona” Getting up was a terrible idea, his head was pounding so hard he felt like throwing up.

“You loved the guy, you worked for him, remember?” Fiona continued “That's one of the many reasons-”

“Are you forgetting the part where he almost killed me?” Rhys said, sounding less indignant than he wanted to as he tried to keep his insides to himself.

“Well, I remember you _telling_ me that. What I saw was you obeying Jack to the end and then carrying his fucking corpse around with you”

There was no reasonable way to explain that, was there? His reasons sounded halfassed even to himself. Rhys turned to the door. If he was going to throw up he'd better do it outside where the rain would wash it away.

“That's not what happened” Rhys' voice was low and he wasn't even sure Fiona could hear him.

“Then tell me what happened! I can't trust you if you keep hiding things from me”

Next thing he knew he was falling, watching the cement floor gradually turn black.

\---

_Beep Beep Beep Beep_

Rhys was sitting with his back to a wall. Someone was kneeling in front of him, big green eyes close to his face trying to catch a movement. The person leaned back and he heard the them huff a breath. Fiona.

“What the hell? That's how you get out of arguments?” she said, but she didn’t sound mad anymore.

Rhys looked around, saw the old dark walls, the night outside the windows. They were still at the abandoned house. Still alone.

“What happened?” he asked, turning back to Fiona.

“You passed out. For like... five minutes and your arm started making this noise _again_ ”

_...erion is legally exempt of guilt if you end up dead anyway. Good luck! Warning: error 36.024, please..._

Rhys tiredly took the metal limb to his lap, wondering how he hadn’t noticed the voice before. He started to go through the familiar route to stop the alarm, but then stopped, frowning. This alarm was different, the friendly Hyperion lady was not saying the same nonsense from before.

_...your echo upgrades are functioning normally. This warning is triggered if there is a chance one, or more, of your cybernetic devices is causing organic tissue damage to happen, which will undoubtedly result in death. If it is happening, of course. It could always be a false alarm!_

“You never heard this before?” Fiona asked.

“Not this one exactly, it was always a different one” The other one did have the death or nothing part so it didn’t shock Rhys as much as it should, but the specifics… this alarm sounded a lot more serious.

_It is highly recommendable that a doctor is consulted. And remember: Hyperion is legally exempt of guilt if you end up dead anyway. Good luck!_

Rhys shut the thing up before it started repeating it.

Fiona sighed, dropping down to sit besides him staring at the things lying on the ground.

“Just tell me what's going on with you. What's up with this alarm? Your fucking arm just said it is… damaging organic tissue?” she said, angry as ever, but then she seemed to reconsider and added more calmly “How’s your head?”

“It hurts” Rhys didn’t move in an attempt to avoid the same shit show from happening twice. He was used to the alarm, but this was something new. 

About a month, they had been in there with the eridians for a month and Rhys couldn’t help but wonder about all the other things they could have done to him. Besides the telepathic talking, of course. All the other things that could have gone wrong, that stupid alarm... It had a fucking level 2. Just when he had stopped to worry about the vague mentions of death from before.

Rhys felt his heart racing and he did his best to focus on something else or who would freak the fuck out.  _It could always be a false alarm._

Fiona ran a hand over her face.

“You look like shit, I can’t yell at someone who looks like that. You cheater.”

Rhys forced a smile.

“What can I say? I can’t loose” he said, but Fiona wasn’t amused and the smile faded away “This whole… alarm thing has been going on for a while, but the blacking out is a first.”

“You think the eridians...”

“Maybe.”

“It- it said you could die.”

“Also says it could be a false alarm” he nodded slightly, trying to put some hope in his tone. It didn’t work. Rhys was suddenly hit with the realization that he most likely just got solid proof that it wasn’t a false alarm, with the passing out and all.

“So… it could be nothing or… a death sentence?” she said.

“Yep” Rhys said, fidgeting with the broken shackle on his flesh wrist. He could take them off if he tried, but they looked cool so why go though the trouble?

“And the new cybernetics are causing this?” Fiona continued.

“Pretty sure, yeah”

“You could just… get rid of them”

“It really doesn’t work like that, last time… I almost died from like, infections and bleeding and...” Rhys sighed “The only people who could maybe help me are all dead hyperion doctors”

The rain was stopping now, leaving behind a thin fog and water dropping from the trees, even though Rhys could still hear eventual thunder coming from far away.

“What about… where you got the- the pieces for them. You didn’t make these things all by yourself, did you?”

Maybe it was the impaired judgment from the tiredness and pain, but Rhys didn’t have it in him to keep dodging her questions. At least Fiona wouldn’t punch him now if she thought he was lying. Probably not.

“I don’t know.” he finally said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t remember how I got these cybernetics, Fiona.” Rhys admitted, looking straight ahead “It’s like- like trying to remember a specific part of your childhood but you just can’t, and it never looked weird before because you just kept on with your life... But one day you look for the memory and it isn’t there.” Rhys was talking fast and he could feel his face going red as he folded his legs to his chest, relieved no wave of nausea followed the movement.

Rhys remembered the hallucination. Jack, on the top of the car. _All that time you don't remember, you don't want to remember_ , he’d said. 

“I didn’t make these, I’m not an engineer and I could never have performed a brain surgery _on myself_ , not on my best day, especially not then” Rhys paused, side-looking Fiona, giving her a chance to call it bullshit. But she didn’t. Her face was unreadable as she stared at him, waiting for him to keep going. It was like now that she got him talking she didn’t want to risk making him stop.

Rhys took a deep breath, knowing if he stopped now he would never bring this up again.

“I was all kinds of fucked up. Running solely on fruit and hallucinating pretty bad most of the time, I wanted to fix that- that machine that was there but I couldn’t do it. It’s still broken, I checked it. Even after I realized I had this huge… gap in my memory, I just assumed I had hired someone, somehow, and- and forgotten about it because I was so bad. But now…” 

Rhys didn’t know what he was going to say, who he was going to try to blame. He had thought about it a lot, especially since the alarm started going off, about how he could possibly have forgotten something like this. “Now it doesn’t matter anymore.”  _Not if I’m going to end up dead anyway._

He looked at Fiona, not sure what he expected. More questions, a suspicious look, maybe a sarcastic commentary. Fiona did none of that, she just stared back at him and nodded.

\---

Fiona made him eat a bunch of mushrooms and went to sit outside in the steps to the house, saying she was going to “Watch for anything that could come for us”. She was asleep in five minutes. Rhys could see her head fallen on her shoulder from where he was sitting inside, scanning every object with his echo eye.

He was feeling a lot better, maybe the mushrooms did make a difference, but he couldn’t bring himself to try to sleep. Rhys was full of nervous, fidgety energy. He passed from an object to the other without really noticing them, trying to will his mind to stop mulling over the death sentence over his head.  _All that time you don't remember, you don't want to remember._

The thing Fiona called a phone was somewhat responsive to touch. The purple streaks followed his fingers but they didn’t do much else. It seemed to be working, and it left Rhys with a bad feeling. Because Jack was out there again and he would be looking for them soon, if he wasn’t already. That thing was broadcasting something all the time and his echo eye couldn’t tell him where the sign was going.

He was tempted to smash it under his feet, but that thing was their only hope of contacting their friends at the moment. And honestly? They would never get out of that planet without help.

So yeah, that object was definitely among the reasons why he didn’t sleep that night.

Rhys eventually took to looking at photos on his arm. Vaughn and Yvette where in most of them. There were some really old ones, because Rhys wasn’t one to delete photos. In fact, he had remembered to rescue the backup memory card from his wrecked arm after he woke up in the crash site, along with the Atlas certificate. That’s how much he valued them.

Between the two the photos had been way more useful, as Rhys didn’t take long to realize there was not much left of Atlas to own. Some abandoned places here and there but it’s not like that piece of paper was going to grant him access anywhere, or get rid of the armed jerks that invaded some of the buildings. Or give him employees or the money to keep them. It was a dead end.

But he was glad he remembered about the photos. In the older ones they looked like kids, they were kids. Just accepted as trainees in the big Hyperion, all smiles and posing with the food from the cafeteria because it was so cool and so different from what they had where they came from. Vaughn still wore those ugly blocky glasses he had before the electronic ones and Yvette was laughing in every single picture.

His heart ached as he went though the photos, missing them and missing a time when Handsome Jack was nothing but a poster hanging on his bedroom’s wall.

He skipped forwards to the most recent ones. A picture from Vasquez’s car (right after they stole it), one of Gortys with Loader Bot, because Sasha thought they looked cute (she wasn’t wrong, they really did). 

And the last one, Vaughn the Bandit King, beardy and smiling with his hands on his waist. Yvette was somewhere off screen, lurking with sad eyes as she did on the rare occasions he saw her there, strangely polite and distant. The tension between them had been hard to deal with, and he wondered if they were ever going to have a chance to go back to normal.

Rhys absently picked up the phone-thingy from where he left it on the ground with his flesh hand. 

It didn’t seem to affect the purple streaks as the metal one did, in fact, the black object didn’t notice it at all. He threw the thing to the metallic hand, not bothering to close the screen showing Vaughn. Rhys meant to see if the streaks would follow again but something else entirely happened. 

The block went completely dark as it passed through the light coming from his palm. And to his despair, the light flickered and blacked out.

Rhys sat straighter, trying to turn it back on as he held the object on the tip of his fingers. The arm wasn’t responding, even though Rhys could move it just fine. He passed the alien block back to the organic hand but let out a surprised cry as he found the thing was piping hot. He clumsily threw it back to the limb that couldn’t sense that.

Rhys held it with his palm open, just above the projector and felt as the object magnetized itself to his palm. Rhys rotated it and watched as the block stuck to him.

“Hm… Fiona. Maybe… maybe you should see this” he called tentatively, staring at the upside down block somewhat horrified.

Fiona only adjusted herself to the wall with a low grunt, still half asleep even as the first streaks of sun light hit her face.

Rhys turned it back up and tried to pull it away with his other hand but it was like trying to grab coal out of a bonfire. He could feel his heart racing, thinking of traps and crafty ways to reinstall an AI as he shook his hand in the air, fingers red from the heat.

“Fiona, wake up” he said, more urgently this time.

Just as Fiona lazily turned her head to the inside of the house the block emitted a single white streak of light and Rhys froze. It expanded itself into a screen and symbols started to appear in it, showing themselves slowly in no apparent order. It was no alphabet Rhys had ever seen before, but he could tel it was some kind of text.

By the side of his vision Rhys saw Fiona hurriedly stumbling inside.

“What…? How?” she looked around, as if looking for intruders before her eyes found the block on Rhys’ hand “You made it work!”

Rhys looked up at her and her excitement made his fear wash away. He felt his lips curve themselves into a smile.

“Told you I would.” Rhys said.

Fiona crouched besides him.

“Do you know what it says?” she asked.

Rhys looked at the strange alphabet coming from the block, or maybe the block was somehow using the projector from his arm, he couldn’t really tell. He scrolled down the page with his other hand as he would with any other menu, and found an unmistakable insert-something-here place.

“Of course not” he said automatically, shaking his head a little. It was clearly some sort of form with instructions and warnings, not a single contractual clause though- Wait. Rhys turned to Fiona. “I… I do, actually! I mean, I can’t read it, but I just _know_ what things mean.”

He expected Fiona to say he wasn’t making any sense, for her to turn those worried eyes at him again, but instead she nodded.

“If the eridians installed the language pack... Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t do the whole job” Fiona sounded so sure of herself Rhys felt a little dumb for not thinking of this himself.

“It’s like there’s some… weird instant translation thing going on.” Rhys mumbled, mostly to himself as he decided to completely ignore whatever was written above the text-box. “It says I have to put a… hmm… I don’t know, a number? Here? Like an identification number?”

“Try putting Vaughn’s echo number” Fiona suggested.

Rhys snorted.

“That’s never going to work, how would two different civilizations come up with a system that worked with the same code as an identifier? It’s impossible, maybe if we find the sound wave used on Pandora-”

“Just try it.”

“It has no reason to work! And besides, there are no numbers here, just… symbol… thingies.” Rhys gestured at it vaguely.

“Can you translate them into numbers?” Fiona asked.

“I guess”

This prompted a smug smile from Fiona and Rhys rolled his eyes as he tapped what he supposed were the right digits. He tried not to think too hard on it, the more he tried the more it all just looked like weird drawings to him.

Fiona sat down.

“Can’t you go faster?” she said.

Rhys glared at her, pressing the last digit.

“Aaand… done.” he pressed the send button with an emphatic tap “This isn’t gonna work, though it’s-” _impossible_. The screen had turned white, a single word in the center. “It’s calling”

Fiona’s expression was shocked, and Rhys realized even she wasn’t putting a lot of faith in this. He put his flesh arm up.

“It’s calling!” he repeated, a triumphant expression in his face that made its way into his voice.

“Thank me later on our way home” Fiona said, pronouncing the last word with contagious happiness.

Their hope was tangible in the air as Fiona leaned forward, stretching her arm to give Rhys a high-five. The universe seemed like a wonderful place until the words _organic tissue damage_ popped in his head and Rhys felt his own smile die down a little. He looked down at the menu and groaned.

“What is it?” Fiona asked.

Rhys glanced at her and back at the menu.

“Call’s over, no one answered” he said.

“What? Try again!”

Rhys entered Vaughn’s number again, and this time the silence that followed was tense. The eridian tech didn’t have a beeping compass to tell how many calls were already made, so they just waited, staring at the quiet, motionless screen.

It wasn’t long before it turned black.

“Hmm… this thing better not have broken my arm ‘cause I really-”

“Shh, did you hear that?” Fiona interrupted, tilting her head to the side and looking at Rhys’ upper arm, where the speakers where.

“Hear what?” Rhys leaned closer to the prosthetic, there were some low sounds coming from it, like interference, or someone fumbling with an echo device. The noise got really loud and then the screen wasn’t black anymore.

Vaughn’s face appeared on the screen. Or, to be more exact, one of his eyes; attentively examining his echo device.

“...can’t be broken I was just using-” his voice was distorted from how close to the speakers he was talking and it brought the biggest of smiles to Rhys’ face.

“Hey buddy” he said “Do you want me to call a tech for you?”

The image turned into a blur as Vaughn moved the echo away from his face. The nerd looked absolutely shocked and Fiona let out a laugh. It took Vaughn a second to process what he was seeing - who he was seeing - before water started to pool in his eyes.

“Rhys!” he said “You’re alive! Fiona! You- me and Sasha and _everyone_ , we’ve been looking for you everywhere- Sasha!” Vaughn turned away and called for her. He was sitting in a bed in what looked just like one of the rooms in Helios “How-?” he shook his head “Where are you? Are you okay? Just give me your location and I’ll send all the cars over right now.”

“I think you’ll need something a little-” Fiona started, but on the corner of the screen a door opened and a woman wearing her hair up and teeth as earrings came in. “Sasha!”

Sasha practically ran to the bed as if she couldn’t believe her eyes, sitting besides Vaughn and almost dropping him out of the bed.

“What happened to your face? You’re bleeding!” she said, staring at Fiona as if trying to detect more injuries besides the purple marks left by punches and the bandage on her arm. She turned to Vaughn, opening up a smile. “You did it, you found them! How-”

“Hmm… excuse me? We found you.” Rhys said, tone full of feigned outrage.

“And, wow, nice to see you two, sis” Fiona said, and even though the commentary was likely meant to sound sarcastic, her expression betrayed her honesty.

Rhys turned to Fiona.

“With this reception, I kinda wish we hadn’t gone though the trouble, honestly.” he joked.

“Yeah, but since the escape-with-the-money plan didn’t work...” Fiona signed theatrically.

“Wait, you really escaped with the money?” Vaughn asked, voice low and serious.

“Of course not, they’re messing with us” Sasha bumped her shoulder on Vaughn’s but then seemed to reconsider “Right?”

Rhys and Fiona exchanged a look and the two burst out laughing. Maybe it was the expression on the others’ faces or the sheer relief to have finally made contact after so long but Rhys just couldn’t stop. He tried to compose himself back together but then he looked at Fiona and the both of them just laughed harder.

“Guys?” Vaughn insisted.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry” Rhys took a deep breath and Fiona managed to calm down too. “We’re just… we’re very happy to see you”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, guys! This chapter is a little shorter then usual but I'll get things back to normal soon.  
> If you like the story please remember to leave kudos or a comment!

Vaughn opened his mouth to say something but Fiona beat him to it.

“No, we don’t have any money” she said, managing to keep a back-to-business tone “The Vault was empty”

“Empty?” Sasha raised an eyebrow, seating on the edge of the bed with an indignant expression, almost as if she didn’t believe them. Maybe she didn’t but the way she leaning forward looked like she wanted to enter Vaughn’s echo and give them a hug anyway.

“Yeah, it teletransported us to an empty room and-”And then we took a bad situation and turned it into a disaster, again. This time with aliens and even more chance of death. “You know what? It’s a long story.”

“Button line is we’re not on Pandora anymore.” Rhys said bluntly.

“Then where are you?” Vaughn was tentative, eyes distant as if he was already planning something.

“We don’t know yet. But you can trace the signal from our call, right bro?” Rhys pointed out. “Get some coordinates...”

Sasha looked at Vaughn and Fiona frowned at the understanding on his face.

“Yeah, don’t worry. We can pull that off.” Sasha had the bright eyes and /sly/ smile of someone who’s about to do something dangerous, while Vaughn moved in his seat uncomfortably. Whatever they were planning to do, Fiona didn’t like it.

“How are you-” Vaughn started.

“There’s another thing.” Rhys said at the same time “Some shit went down and… hmm… I may or may not have brought Handsome Jack back.”

“You… what?” Sasha.

“Again? Bro… Just… Bro.” Something flashed in his eyes and Fiona could have sworn it was pity.

“And the eridians are with him.” Rhys spit out with a sigh.

“The eridians? How-? For the love of- How does that even happen?” Vaughn’s eyes were wide like he was this close to completely losing it. Fiona imagined it must sound awful for them, now that they found her and Rhys they were far away and going terrible.

Sasha’s hand were closed in fists on the bed and Fiona knew she had to make some damage control before she decided to do something stupid.

“Look, there’s nothing to worry about. We’re fine! Hidden in an abandoned house, totally cool.” Fiona amended, trying to make the murderous expression disappear from Sasha’s face.

“No, no, no. Explain how-” but then the audio started to cut off, and the image became distorted, full of horizontal lines and delayed movements “pu... let… ona..”

“Why is it doing that?” Fiona outstretched a hand to the screen, to give it a tap or something but her fingers went right through it.

“I don’t know” Rhys was frowning and looking straight ahead with his artificial eye glowing.

 

“Are you-?” Fiona moved her hand around her eye and Rhys frowned.

“What?” He put his own hand on his face.

“Your eye is glowing, you can’t… feel that?”

On the screen Vaughn brought the echo closer, trying to see something and then the screen flickered off.

“Did you…?” she looked at Rhys, trying to ignore the sudden fear in her gut.

“No.” he said, keeping his metal arm outstretched in front of them and Fiona doesn’t question it, because she knows what they’re both thinking. All the easiness from seconds before was gone, replaced by, cold, white fear.

A yellow figure appeared on the screen and Fiona pushed the cube on Rhys’s hand away without thinking. It burned her hand and Fiona gasped, holding it close to her. The image was stabilizing, loading, streaks and cubes of yellow slowly forming a body.

“Rhys! Do something, disconnect it!” She got up and tried to push him up with her but he looked paralyzed.

“I-”

Fiona kicked the cube once, twice, it didn’t bulge. She was going for the next try but Rhys was hitting the thing on the ground, trying to smash it and break it. It wasn’t working.

“Ahhh, this isn’t good.” He stopped hitting and looked at Fiona. “If he tries to… do something. With me. Hit me hard on the head, alright?”

“Got it.” Fiona clasped her hands together. “Let me try some more kicking.”

Rhys grimaced. His eye was still glowing and it made his face look weird, so much bonier and sharper than it actually was.

“I don’t think that’s gonna work.” But he extended his arm anyway.

“Why do you keep plugging…” Another kick. “…random things…” Kick. “To yourself?”

Rhys tilted his head up.

“This was _your_ idea!”

“No it wasn’t!” Fiona’s voice was so high she barely recognized it as her own. “I just- brought it here. It’s _not_ the same thing.”

The arm emitted some weird ass sound and they both turned to the screen, where the unmistakable figure of Handsome Jack was smiling at them.

“You two done with the bickering?” he said, eyes locked with Rhys’s.

Fiona looked around for something, a brick, a stick… anything to get that thing off. Or to get Rhys down. Anyhow, whatever Handsome Jack had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.

“Soooo, kiddos! I’ve got some good news for you. Everything is going fine here with the aliens, hell, if I knew they were so damn friendly when I was running Hyperion I wouldn’t have bothered with those incompetent humans. The more you learn, huh?” His tone was friendly but Fiona wasn’t fooled for a second, she knew too damn well she was dealing with a snake.

She got to the other side of the room, got a piece of the roof from the ground but it crumpled under her fingers.

“What do you want?” Rhys said, stupidly. He was still sitting on the same spot, staring at the screen as if his eyes had been glued. Fiona turned to him shaking her hands to get rid of the dirt.

“Rhys, snap out of it. He’s trying to find us or- or- kill us somehow.”

But it was like talking to a wall.

“Me? Oh, just talking to old friends, Rhysie. You know me, never one to forget ‘bout people.” The hologram stopped smiling and Fiona felt the danger of it, she stopped and stared, ready to do something if she had to.

“And I see you trying to log off the data, you’re not gonna make it, cupcake, you know I’m a waay better programmer than you are.” He chuckled back to normal and Fiona turned her back to them, looking for something useful on the debris. “But, no, really, I actually have some business with you. Like… yeah, it would be better if you were here, with me. I wouldn’t try to kill you, Rhysie, you know that, right? I know we’ve had our misunderstands in the past but we accomplished so much together!”

“Don’t listen to him!” Fiona sang, more as a reminder she was there than anything. Rhys wasn’t going to fall for this bullshit again. He wasn’t.

“So, hear me out. I’m sending my guys over there. They’re gonna pick you up, no harm done, and they’re gonna bring you here just in time for the big surprise. You’re gonna love it, I know. The girl dies, of course, but you get to be here! With me! No tricks this time. Promise.”

Fiona looked out a hole in the fallen wall as if to spot incoming cars or spaceships or whatever Jack had sent, but everything was peaceful and quiet outside. But Fiona didn’t doubt they were coming.

She turned to Rhys and he was already getting up, using the wall for support.

“Yeah, thanks for the invitation but no, thanks.” He looked at Fiona and then at the door out.

“The cube. He’s gonna follow us.” Fiona mouthed along some wild gesticulating.

“Oh-ho-ho don’t leave just yet. You _want_ to be here. You see, Rhysie, this isn’t the first time I see daylight since you betrayed me on the Helios crash.”

Rhys flinched hard and went a shade paler. Fiona remembered what he’d said about not remembering what had happened after the Helios crash.

“Yeah, you guessed it.” Jack continued. “You’re smart, that’s why I’ll mostly forgive all your wrongs. Yes, I built the cybernetics for you, you’re welcome. But when I built you this arm I also left you a gift. I might have put this built in device to kill you if you ever got rid of me so… yeah, if you don’t come here, you’re dead, cupcake.”

“Now that’s the worst lie I’ve ever heard.” Fiona mocked. But then she remembered the night before when they were arguing and Rhys passed out, the headaches, the alarm…. Shit. She had thought the eridians were to blame, but if Jack was telling the truth…

“I’m a lot of things but I’m not a liar. Mostly. Not about this.” “I bet it already started. Tell her, Rhysie.”

The metal arm went limp and the cube feel to the ground, opening a hole in the wood floor. Rhys let out a sound of relief. But how could she know it was really Rhys?

Fiona refrained herself from stepping back.

“What happened?” she asked carefully. _Please be Rhys, please be Rhys…_ If it was Handsome Jack there, she wasn’t sure she could get close enough to knock him unconscious.

“I killed the batteries. Arm’s not gonna work for some time now. It works on bioenergy, I just have to eat and sleep and it will be back to normal.” He was holding it close to him with his flesh arm, still leaning on the wall. He smiled at Fiona. “Jack did not see it coming, I’m a genious.”

“You think he’s telling the truth? About the cybernetics?”

Rhys leaned his head back into the wall.

“Yes.”


End file.
